The Indirect Approach
by The Sh33p
Summary: On the eve of the Chuunin Exams, during his training with Jiraiya, Uzumaki Naruto is going to learn the hard way that some enemies just can't be beaten without use of a more... Indirect approach...
1. Strike the Sky

**Foreword:** I know not everyone listens to music as they read or write, and I know my own choices tend to be hard to get for some people, but for those who enjoy a little background atmosphere when reading, I've included the story's soundtrack, and I'll be putting it before each new Part.

**Scene One:** Blue Gender - Preset  
**Scene Two:** Trigun - No Beat  
**Scene Three/Five/Seven:** Trigun - Never Could Have Been Worse  
**Scene Four/Six:** Naruto - Heavy Violence

* * *

**

The Indirect Approach

**  
_Part One: Strike the Sky_  
Introductions, Instigations and Inquiries

* * *

It took all of five seconds and one unexpected movement to end his dream of being a Hokage. 

Two seconds for the approach, one for actual hit, another two to register what had happened. 

Contrary to his increasingly persistent nightmares, it had not been a killing blow. In fact, it hadn't even knocked him out so much as it had brought him to his knees. 

In some _far_ too rational part of his completely irrational mind, something whispered to him that he should have seen it coming. After all, Iruka had always said that the smallest things are what kill or ruin most ninja. Everyone expected to have some grotesque killing technique levied at them at some point, and all of his peers had always gone for instant kills in every battle... 

Well, almost all of them. Rational thought turned exceedingly bitter as the mental image of a Sound-nin being carted away from a total defeat. It was a thought that lasted all of a tenth of a second before a surge of blood drew his attention back to reality. 

Yes. 

It was always the small things. 

All but one of his fellow Genin had favored the direct approach, no matter what lengths they went to in order to achieve it. That approach was summed up in two simple words: Quick win. Or quick kill. Either worked, depending on the person. 

Naruto had been the most direct out of all of his class. Perhaps Sasuke had occasionally rivaled him due to the Sharingan's ability to predict his opponent's moves, and if foriegners counted then Gaara's sister was definately close, but Naruto had always been the most blatantly direct. He went for the quickest win possible, and that generally meant hitting as hard and as fast as you could. 

This way of thinking had caused him to forget something critical to any battle: Weapons are targets. 

In his case, his right hand had been the target. 

Jiraiya had blown it off at the wrist with a low-powered Rasengan. 

And when it was all said and done, Naruto couldn't even bring himself to scream. He just stared at the blood-spewing stump where his hand used to be, jaws clenched so tightly that they almost threatened to hurt worse than his forearm. His eyes were widened and surprisingly dry, completely void of tears simply due to the shock of it all. 

"_Get up_." 

What was the point? A ninja with one hand was useless. Sure, he could try to get by on nothing but Rasengan, Taijutsu and the extreme basics like Kawarimi, but he wasn't a genius. He wasn't like that boy from the Hidden Mist who could do seals one-handed. He wasn't Rock Lee either. 

So why was Jiraiya bothering to order him around? 

"_Get up, Naruto_." 

_ How did it all come to this?_

* * *

The situation had changed so quickly that he had barely had any time to even think straight. 

First they had arrived in a small city on the edge of the Thunder Country's territory. Then Jiraiya had wandered into a geisha house, having spotted a busty redhead giving him a come hither look. Naruto, being Naruto, had followed Jiraiya into said geisha house, regardless of the minor technicality that he was still underage for even being in the red light district. The guards at the door were so shocked by his brazen attitude and how stubbornly he followed Jiraiya into the building, bitching at every step about the man's worthlessness as a teacher, that they didn't even raise a blade to stop him. 

Somewhere into it, things got... _Interesting_. To say the least. 

Chiefly because at least fifteen women had come within a handhold of ripping his pants off and making a man out of him. He didn't mind the attention, but beneath nine layers of bravado, Uzumaki Naruto wanted to have his first time actually mean something. 

By the time he had finally jumped out of a window, landed on someone _else's_ balcony and then sprang up to the floor he _knew_ Jiraiya would be on, it was already too late. 

As he had been on at least one or two other occasions, the Frog-summoning lecher had been poisoned. Normally, as he was so fond of mentioning to people, women didn't get Jiraiya. Jiraiya got women. 

In this case, the busty redhead had a sister, someone occupied the man's attention for a split second and when Naruto finally arrived with a crouch on the balcony, Jiraiya let out an _obnoxious_ cackle before falling over backwards, completely unconscious. 

Privately, Naruto had thanked God that Jiraiya was still fully clothed, because what happened next made things go from interesting downright chaos. 

The two women, caught off guard by his arrival, ran out of the room screaming. A few seconds later, two Samurai and a dozen guards armed with quarterstaffs barged in. The fight to follow had been a nice way to blow off some built-up tension from earlier -- he put one man through a wall, two more through the floor, sent one of the Samurai flying over the balcony and knocked the rest of them out with an odd _reversal_ of his usual Naruto Rendan. This time, _he_ had been alone and his opponents had been many. 

Not that it made much of a difference. After the fighting, the remaining Samurai was hanging with his head lodged into the ceiling and all the others were just plain unconscious. Naruto had then gone over to Jiraiya to grab him and drag him out of this place, and then... 

Chaos turned to outright annoyance. 

"Dropping your guard to retrieve a single wounded comrade is one of the first mistakes taught in any academy," someone had said, though the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. All he could make out of it was that it was a man. 

Then the roof of the casino across the street had exploded.

* * *

"My... M-my... My _hand_..." He was stuttering. Shock was starting to either wear off or _really_ set in. Hard to tell which when all you can do is stare at your own blood spewing stump of what used to be a wrist. 

"So what?" Jiraiya snorted at him. 

"_You blew off my hand_!" 

"Boo-fucking-hoo. Want me to kiss it and make it better?" 

"WHY?" 

Jiraiya snorted again. 

"Just because you're a powerhouse doesn't mean you're going to win every battle by simply overwhelming your opponent. Some of them will simply refuse to play by those rules, and if you can't adapt, you've got no point in living life as a ninja," the man replied with a feral tone to his voice. 

Had any of his former students ever had to put up with _this_? 

"I wasn't even using very much of my chakra and you had enough power to do _that_," his teacher-turned-mutilator said, obviously pointing at the thirty foot wide crater behind him. Naruto didn't bother to look. "But I still took you down like the rank amateur you are. If you had thought to do something similar against that Uchiha _brat_, we wouldn't need to be having this conversation right now." 

_This_ was the thanks he got?

* * *

"_MOUNTAIN SAGE JIRAIYA! YOUR HEAD BELONGS TO ME!_" 

Between himself and four hastily summoned Kage Bunshin, Naruto was barely able to hurl the Frog-lecher's body out of the way without being killed in the process. Two Kage Bunshin had ripped the man from Naruto's shoulders, another had grabbed Naruto himself and yanked him out of the way and the last one leapt forward with a suicidal devotion to unspoken orders, trying to block the hit with its own body. 

In the confusion of the moment, Naruto was hardly surprised when he heard a sound like thunder and an appropriate flash of light to go along with it. His Kage Bunshin crashed almost head-first into the sword blade of whoever was executing the technique, stopping both dead in their tracks before the thing vanished. 

When Naruto slid to a halt on both feet and one hand, the first thing he saw upon swinging back around was the would-be assassin himself. 

He was obviously a ninja. Black pants, a black sweatshirt and a dark grey Chuunin or Jounin's vest. He wore flat-soled geta sandals and black socks, as opposed to the boot-sandals of most ninja Naruto ran across. He had on a pair of fingerless gloves with metal plates on the back. A presently empty sword sheathe hung at his back, a traditional shuriken holster was on the right thigh and his head was almost entirely concealed behind a tight black mask. 

The only features that Naruto could actually see were that his eyes were as cold and distant as the clouds and his hair, judging from the eyebrows, was solid blue. What little Naruto could see of the man's skin indicated that he was probably paler than Kakashi. 

"Kage Bunshin," the man said appraisingly, glaring right at Naruto and seeming to forget his actual target for the moment. "What is your name, rank and age?" 

"What's it to you?" Naruto shot back. 

"I was going to compliment you, as you seem to be young, but now..." 

The man swept his Katana up in both hands, assuming a tight stance with legs slightly bent and sword held to the side of his face, giving him a clear line of sight. 

"I think I'm going to just kill you instead." 

Naruto had to actually force a smirk. Somewhere in between trying to think up a comeback, figure out how in the hell he was going to get out of this one and realizing that the edge of that sword was still _sparking_ with electric blue chakra, it occurred to him to look at the man's forehead protector. He only barely recognized it as belonging to the Hidden Cloud. 

Before he could try to comment though, he was docking under a sword swipe that would have taken his head off. A Kage Bunshin jumped in to try and help, but the man was too fast and too precise. As the clone swooped in, Kunai in hand, the Cloud-nin shifted his stance. The knife hit the back of his sheathe and he spun around, simultaneously kicking Naruto in the jaw before laying in a shallow cut all the way down the Kage Bunshin's chest, vaporizing it instantly. 

Naruto landed on both feet, upside down on the ceiling. One tiger seal later, his right hand shot up and two fingers halted just in front of his chin. Flames shot out from his mouth in a tight spread, and while it wasn't the fire of the Uchiha clan like Sasuke used, it was plenty in this situation. Even generic techniques pack plenty of power in close quarters. 

His opponent dodged it with nothing but Kawarimi and an overturned floor-table. By the time Naruto had realized his mistake, the Cloud-nin was rebounding off the furthest wall and coming in fast with another sweep of his sword. 

If he had been any later in jumping out of the way, he would've lost a leg.

* * *

His wrist was starting to burn. Blood bubbled, and Jiraiya let out a lazy sounding sigh of something that sounded _almost_ like relief. Naruto spared him only a short glance, looking up and making eye contact before the man started laughing out loud. When he looked back down, blood was still spraying, but now seemed to be confined within the reaches of a familiar looking jagged claw made of pure red chakra. 

A few seconds later, the urge to scream bloody murder overpowered him. His vision turned solid white, seering with pain as something _cracked_ in his forearm. Not long after that, he doubled over and gnashed his teeth, and not long after _that_, he started beating his head into the ground to try and make the hurting stop. 

When he rolled over again, he felt as if a thin layer of raw nerves had formed in the stump of his wrist. It was like they existed solely to give him the sensation of his arm ripping apart from the inside, stretched and warping and wanting to bulge in every direction at once. Jiraiya's laughter had died down, but amidst his own screaming, Naruto hadn't actually heard his teacher stop. 

Finally, there was a stomach churning pop and his entire right side went viciously numb.

* * *

When Naruto landed, his opponent skidded to a halt on the ceiling and bounced off of it, coming right down at him with sword hald in a stabbing position. 

Naruto was ready for it though. The remaining Kage Bunshin were too, and when the thrust came, one of them jumped in and crudely tackled the Cloud-nin right out of the air and into a wall, shattering it completely and exposing them all to the sight of a rather portly looking fellow currently being paddled by a _very_ uncomfortable and frightened looking young woman. 

The second Kage Bunshin appeared at his side. Almost as one, Naruto and his clone shot one hand each at one another, a mix of orange and yellow chakra immediately flowing between them. It was a refined version of his self-made shortcut to the full Rasengan, performed with himself providing the power and the Kage Bunshin helping to focus it. For all its complexity, he found this to be the easy version. 

When the Kage Bunshin that had performed the tackle ceased to exist in a puff of smoke, the two ran forward in perfect step. Distance closed in an instant, and when the Cloud-nin was on his feet, Naruto and his second self both thrust their hands out, essentially seeking to plunge the Oodama Rasengan right into the man's chest and face. 

As with before, it didn't go as planned. 

The man ducked, slid forward with the grace of a cat and bolted upright with a spin. The hilt of his sword crashed into the side of Naruto's head so quickly that he barely even had time to register the miss. Simultaneously, he and the clone lost control of the Rasengan, and the attack detonated with a massive shockwave of a now-orange chakra. Both the fat man and his hapless geisha were spared mutilation or death only by virtue of being just outside the killing range. Even then, they were both blown into the far well. 

Naruto himself slammed into the side of his last Kage Bunshin, sending them both into the nearest wall. For a second or so, he had the doppleganger as a shock absorber, but the force of the impact left it squashed into nothing but a puff of smoke _far_ too quickly for his liking. It vanished half-way down the wall and Naruto was left skidding the rest of the way on his shoulder and face before hitting the wall seperating the room from the balcony and coming to a halt. 

He couldn't win this.

* * *

When he finally regained both feeling and consciousness, it was almost nightfall. Jiraiya towered over him with an amused-but-satisfied look over his face. It hurt just to breathe, and he could smell the crusty stench of dried blood all over himself. It was a scent he had come to be used to, though he couldn't quite recall when or what situation had caused it to be so lodged into his memory. All he knew was that he recognized it on pure instinct, and he didn't like it because it usually meant something _bad_. 

"You look like Hell, kid," Jiraiya pointed out with a grin that made Naruto want to deck him. 

So he did. 

A few seconds later, the pervert's oversized frame crashed into the dirt, skidded twenty feet and flipped over on his head before finally stopping with a distinct _thud_. 

For all of a split second, Naruto felt an intense feeling of satisfaction. 

Then it felt like his right forearm had caught fire. With a scream, he glared down and started blowing air on his hand... 

And then it occurred to him: Jiraiya had blown his hand _off_ not too long ago. 

Naruto was so stunned that he didn't even blink until the Toad-Hermit finally scraped himself off the ground and started screaming obscenities about how unappreciative today's youth could be. Then, a few seconds later, both of them stopped and Jiraiya nonchalantly brushed dirt out of his hair, patted a red mark on the side of his face and shrugged it all off like nothing had ever happened to begin with. Then he waltzed over to Naruto and bent down to get a look at the new hand, which really, _really_ should not have been there. 

"Huh. Guess it really can heal you from a lost limb," the man pointed out. Naruto twitched. 

"_You blew off my hand and you didn't even know for sure if it'd heal_?" He shouted, smacking Jiraiya again with the new limb, only to break out into another unbecoming scream at the utter _burning_ sensation coursing throughout his right arm. 

Jiraiya, in an entirely _un_-Jiraiya-like manner, took it in stride. 

"I'm guessing the nerves are completely raw and tender still. It looked like the Kyuubi forged that out of pure chakra," he pointed out. "Obviously, that's gonna overload things a bit. Best to take it easy for a little while." 

"_Why_ did you do that?" 

"To prove a point."

* * *

When he realized he couldn't win this fight, Naruto came to the equal realization that he had never been the target in the first place. Rational thought from a normally irrational mind did the rest. 

Jiraiya was unconscious. The assassin had come for Jiraiya. Naruto couldn't beat the assassin, and Jiraiya was obviously not going to be of any help right now. There wasn't any point in staying, because this wasn't his fight in the first place. All he had to do was grab the old man and run like Hell. 

The whole train of thought had taken all of a quarter of a second. During that time, the Cloud-nin had shifted into another stance. The sword's tip aimed at Naruto's chest, the entire weapon held close to its wielder's body. It looked unbearably awkward to him, but as he wasn't a swordsman, he wasn't about to question how lethal it was. 

"What's your name?" He asked, trying to buy time. 

"Chimi Tensho," the assassin identified himself, only to continue. "It's not my real name, but as you're about to die, you needn't concern yourself." 

_ That_ was his opening. While Tensho wasted time explaining that it was only an alias, Naruto sprang into action. 

Kage Bunshin and Kawarimi. It was all executed as quickly as he could manage it, first forming the clone with his hands performing the seal while seperated at his sides. It wasn't easy, but the technique was his specialty, and willpower alone _made_ it work. The clone appeared in front of him instantly, but by then he had put most of his chakra into his legs and gave a hard push to the left. 

As expected, Tensho didn't notice. Eyes beneath the Sharingan and Byakugan lacked the attention to detail and the speed of perception to catch him at his game. The Cloud-nin surged forward with a lightning quick attack, but by then Naruto had already landed next to Jiraiya. By the time the Katana's blade struck his clone, Naruto had grabbed the man and heaved him up across one shoulder. It wasn't easy, and he was sure Jiraiya's head had cracked against the ceiling on the way up, but a few bruises were acceptable right now. 

With a loud puff of smoke and a feeling like someone had just ripped a hair from his eyebrows, Naruto whipped around to see that Tensho had halted himself in mid-stab by pulling out a pair of kunai and anchoring himself to the wall. The sword had still struck, and annihilated, the Kage Bunshin, and the release of chakra from its blade had completely singed the wall behind where it had been standing, but Chimi was onto him now, and that trick probably wouldn't work again... 

"And what is _your_ name?" The man finally growled out again, now clearly annoyed as he tore the kunai from the wall and again assumed a stance. This time, the sword was held over his head, his side turned to Naruto and its blade aimed at his face. The two kunai, held side-by-side in one hand, were tipped up against the back of the blade. 

"Uzumaki Naruto," he finally said with a smile. 

For a moment, the two stared each other down. Then, through Tensho's mask, Naruto thought he saw a shred of movement indicative of a smirk. Whatever it was though, he said nothing more. 

The mountain demon lashed out with another sword thrust, but Naruto pumped chakra straight into his feet and jumped up. One loud crash later, he and Jiraiya were through the ceiling and on the top floor, and another eight Kage Bunshin after that, they had been catapulted off the balcony and over the very casino that Jiraiya's would-be assassin had blown his way out of to begin with.

* * *

"... Prove a point?" 

"Yes, dumbass," Jiraiya answered, just before continuing without giving Naruto the time to ask another obvious or redundant question. "Think about it. If someone doesn't play by _your_ rules, they can just take you out by doing what I did. I can't even move all that well and all I had to do to beat you was trick you into using your best move. You failed to anticipate it, thinking I would foolishly try winning a battle of power against a damn _demon_." 

"_And how did blowing my hand off factor into all of that?_" 

"... Well, that was actually kind of an accident," Jiraiya commented with a shrug and a sidelong glance away from him. 

"_AN ACCIDENT?_" Naruto seethed. 

"Well, you've apparently regenerated from having a hole punched in your chest, not to mention everything else you've sprung back from," Jiraiya answered with a shrug. "It was an acceptable risk to see if you could come back from having a limb blown off--" 

"WHAT KIND OF ACCEPTABLE RISK IS THAT? YOU FUCKING SADIST!" 

"But anyway..." 

Jiraiya trailed off. Naruto spasmed. 

"Don't get an invincibility complex from this," the man cautioned, taking control back from his younger student. "The healing factor of the Kyuubi _isn't_ a studied phenomenon. Chances are that it only kicked in because of your surge of overpowering fear from the wound. If you start thinking that you can survive without having to worry about losing a bodypart just because it _could_ regenerate, there's a very real possibility that the Kyuubi will stop healing you." 

Naruto paused. Then grimaced. 

"Why would it do that?" He asked, suddenly feeling a bit sick. 

"It leveled Konoha because it happened to be _there_, Naruto. It isn't exactly a _nice_ little fox you can pretend to keep as a pet," Jiraiya reminded him with a bland tone. Something in Naruto's gut -- probably the Nine-Tails itself -- said that there was more to it than that, but... 

For once, he wasn't going to question anything. 

"So it's like having the winning lotto numbers and never being able to play," he said. 

"Something like that. You've got to apply caution. Even if it _does_ regenerate you again, you'll be weakened and vulnerable. A two-step kill is the same as a one-step kill as long as the opponent is dead," Jiraiya replied. "Chopping off an arm is just a precursor to taking off the head." 

Naruto fought the urge to gulp. With this unsettling bit of information and advice now lodged in his brain, he turned his attention back to what had started this whole conversation to begin with: _Why_. 

"Why'd you wanna... _Teach_ me that anyway?" He asked, watching as Jiraiya finally straightened up and popped his back with an expression that looked as if someone had just kicked him in the groin. It took him a few seconds, but he answered with a grim tone to his voice. 

"Because our-- _Your_ opponent is using Raiheijin," Jiraiya answered him. "It's a Cloud technique, high-level combination of Ninjutsu and Taijutsu performed with either a Katana, Wakizashi or Tanto, though I've seen it used less effectively with other weapons too. Judging by what you told me earlier," he began, turning away and motioning for Naruto to follow him, "This particular swordsman is an expert with it. What did you say his name was?" 

"Chimi Tensho. It was--" 

"An alias. I know. I'll get to that later, but you should know one thing..." 

Jiraiya stopped and turned to his side expectantly. When Naruto caught up and looked up to him, the man's expression was as grim as his voice. 

"Raiheijin is a technique that's only ever been bested by Chidori. It's how it acquired the nickname of Raikiri. Kakashi literally cut through a Raiheijin and killed its wielder." 

Naruto felt his mouth twitch. Jiraiya started walking again. 

"I thought--" 

"You _thought_ Rasengan was superior to Chidori. It is. On a purely practical level, you can do a _whole_ lot more with Rasengan than you can with Chidori, and you don't need some lame-ass Bloodline to use it effectively. As a piercing attack though, Chidori is unrivaled by anything I've ever personally laid my eyes on -- _including_ Raiheijin. Your clashes with Sasuke weren't a true measure of Chidori or Rasengan, as both of you were basically striking at each other's techniques more than you were each other. It's like stabbing a grenade." 

"What's the difference with this guy's technique then?" Naruto finally asked, forcing a word in edge-wise as he caught back up. 

"Chidori relies on the dominant hand of its user to be effective. Raiheijin uses the blade of a sword to be a gathering point for its energy, and unlike Chidori, you don't _need_ a running start. To make matters worse, it can be used for cutting instead of just stabbing, and the shock generated by the blade is usually enough to paralyze you or kill you even if the weapon itself doesn't," Jiraiya answered, bringing the two to another stop. 

They were on a low cliff, overlooking the city. It had been where Jiraiya finally woke up and pried himself off of Naruto's shoulder however many hours ago, and it hadn't been too far from where Naruto's former right hand was currently lying in mutilated ruin. 

The thought that a part of him would probably _literally_ be here forever unless he went back and got it was _utterly_ disturbing. 

"As far as Chimi Tensho goes... His real name is Shunseito Kazuma. Son of a veteran of the last Secret World War, currently a Kumogakure Jounin. Has a flare for the dramatic and a reputation for being an expert swordsman," Jiraiya pointed out. 

"... Gee. Lotta good _that_ information is," Naruto muttered. 

"Can't tell why he's after me in specific, seeing as how Kumogakure and Konoha only ever fought a few battles during the war. If it's revenge, he'd be better off going after Kakashi. Since I doubt the Hidden Cloud's current leaders would want to risk open war..." 

He trailed off. Naruto raised a brow. 

"Why kill you if your death'd lead to war?" He asked. 

Jiraiya changed the subject. 

"Either way, his motivation's not that important. What matters is that whatever poison he slipped me," Naruto noticed that Jiraiya specifically avoided mentioning that it was one of the two geishas who got him, "Messed up my chakra in a big way." 

"Which means you're useless," Naruto replied. 

"_Hardly_," Jiraiya bit back, punching him in the top of the head. Naruto let out a yelp, but the man spoke up again without even paying attention to it. 

"But chances are, I won't be able to fight effectively for a week or more. Whatever poison he slipped me, it sure as hell wasn't as nice as Tsunade's," he said, suddenly sounding a bit grim. "Which means that until this is over, you're gonna have to be my bodyguard." 

"... Like I hadn't already figured that out..." 

_ Crack_ went the fist across the top of his head. 

"It also means we're gonna have to start hiding a little more. Chimi's not as good as I am, but he's better than you are right now and he's got the brains to think ahead." 

_ "Which means no more bath-house peeping, visits to whore-houses and drunken gambling,"_ Naruto thought with a small grin. The old bastard would actually have to focus on his train- 

_ Crack! _

-ing... 

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR!" He shrieked. 

"_Pay attention_," Jiraiya replied. "Tomorrow, I'm gonna start teaching you the basics of what you'll need to beat Chimi. Hopefully we'll be able to avoid him until the poison wears off, but I'm not taking any chances." 

"And tonight?" Naruto asked, rubbing his sore head with one hand and a bland expression. 

"Tonight, we're gonna find a place to bunk." 

And with that, Jiraiya turned and started walking towards a path down the cliff. Naruto grimaced. 

"By the way," he asked, running to a catch up. "How is it you can fight even if your chakra's supposed to be messed up?" 

As if on cue, the man passed out in mid-step. The only reason he didn't fall off the cliff was because Naruto grabbed him by his hair and held him over the edge. 

"That answers _that_," he muttered. 

_

End Part One

_

* * *

**Author's Note:** Remember, manga readers, Naruto did say that Jiraiya was a brutal teacher...

... Well, that and I just wanted to have some fun with Naruto's ability to heal.

Chimi Tensho means something like Mountain Ogre Striking the Sky.

Look for the next Part soon!


	2. Rampant Reasoning

**Foreword:** Soundtrack is as follows:

**Scene One:** Tales of Symphonia - Prologue  
**Scene Two:** Tales of Symphonia - Shinobi Life  
**Scene Three:** Ghost in the Shell - Surf  
**Scene Four:** Ghost in the Shell - Stamina Rose  
**Scene Five:** Hack Sign - Fake Wings

* * *

** The Indirect Approach**  
_ Part Two: Rampant Reasoning  
_ Whirlpools and Sunny Places

* * *

"You're looking even more worried than usual." 

A simple analysis from an infinitely complex woman. 

"I-it's... It's nothing, ma'am." 

She made it a point to try and hunch over the railing. As if she could hide without jumping into the sea. 

"Do you still want to wear your protector over your eyes?" 

She blushed. 

"Don't. You're to wear your protector around your neck as you always do. That's an order." 

"Yes ma'am." 

Apparently satisfied, the Hokage turned away and made her way off to some other task that needed doing. When she was gone, Hinata finally looked up again, feeling sick to her stomach. The ocean had nothing to do with it. 

The journey had taken weeks so far. It had started on foot -- a small army of Hidden Leaf ninja had set out from Konoha early one morning and trekked for days through the woodlands of the Fire Country. Then they had all converged at the port of Nishikougai. The wait had lasted two days, mostly for stragglers, head-checks and sortings, and then everyone had piled onto any one of three ships before setting off. From there, they swung around the islands of Tenbou and Idohori and made a byline for the city of Ikazuchikougai, one of the only ports in the whole of the Thunder Country. 

She could see it easily now. They were only a few miles away from it after all. 

It was a bustling, sprawling conglomoration of spires and pagodas, mixing old with new and the ramshackle with the flawless. Beyond the actual port, she could see that the city was alive, even in the early morning. Further, she could see a cliff rising up from the city's back, stretching hundreds of feet into the sky like a great, roughly surfaced wall. Further still, beyond the cliff, she knew that the path to Kumogakure waited... 

As much as she wanted to acknowledge that the place was breathtaking, she loathed it. Hated it, in fact, though she had only ever admitted that hatred to three people. 

"Nervous?" An unusually calm voice asked from behind her. A few seconds later, Hinata took note of a pair of hands resting on the railing next to her elbows. 

"Yes," she admitted. It was a moot point in hiding it from him. 

Hyuuga Neji -- her cousin and, genetically at least, half-brother -- was not someone you could keep secrets from. His ability to read body language had only improved in the past two years. So had hers, for that matter. 

"You're t-tense," she noted, only barely able to supress the need to stutter. 

"Only because I'm on duty," he replied. He wasn't looking at her with his eyes, but she knew his focus was on her anyway. 

He was a Jounin already. A freshly minted Jounin, of course, having just passed above the rank of Special Jounin a few days before this journey began. He was also one of the only familiar faces she had been able to keep around since they'd left Konoha. He was everything a Hyuuga was supposed to be, and he wore the clothing of nobility more like a samurai than a ninja. He _looked_ more noble than any other person Hinata had dealt with in the past few weeks, excepting _only_ the Hokage herself. 

How ironic it was, then, that he was only a noble in name. 

"You're nervous because of what happened on your birthday," he said. It was a statement, not a question. 

"Tsun-... T-The Ho-kage said that Kumogak-kure still w-wants the Byaku-ugan," she said, unable or unwilling to bother keeping the stutter under control this time. 

"If anyone tries to take it, I'll kill them," Neji replied in a matter of fact tone. 

It made her wince. 

When she had been three years old, a Cloud ninja had sought to kidnap her. Her father dispatched him with little trouble, but the incident still lingered in her mind. Kurenai had helped her to trace almost every single one of her problems back to that one incident, and it made her hate the ninja of the Hidden Cloud far more than she would ever want to reveal to anyone. If not for her father's intervention, they could have -- and _would_ have -- ripped the Byakugan right out of her eye sockets, and if she survived... 

She shuddered at the prospect of what they might have done to her to keep her useful if she survived an extraction. It was something that gave her nightmares. 

"Th-Thank you, Brother Neji," she said, and meant it. 

"You're welcome," he replied, and also meant it. 

In the lull between words, Hinata made a mental note to kiss Naruto on the cheek in thanks for beating some sense into Neji -- and beating some sense into the entire Hyuuga Clan in the process. She didn't know what exactly had happened to put her cousin at ease like he was now, but it _definately_ stemmed from Naruto and-- 

And she was blushing again. 

Neji didn't speak of it. She knew he had noticed, but quietly thanked him for not pointing it out. 

"We'll be at Ikazuchikougai soon," he stated, removing his hands from the rail and taking a few steps back. Hinata could hear his long hair rustling as he turned around. "I suggest you don something more formal. The Hyuuga _are_ noble." 

"I'm not noble," she replied, voice lowered. 

"You're more noble than you give yourself credit for. I'd like it if you held your head up when we walk through the streets." 

And then he was gone. 

Hinata sighed and looked down at the water. Dawn would be a little while longer, but it was already the twilight before sunrise and the day would probably be a long one. 

In a few weeks time, she, Sakura and Kiba would be entering the second Chuunin Exam of the year. They were the last members of the Rookie Nine who weren't Chuunin or above by now, and while she had unlimited faith in her teammates... 

Well, Hinata wasn't too hopeful about her own prospects.

* * *

"Wake _up_ you dirty old _bastard_!" 

_ Punt_! 

Jiraiya's immense bulk hit the floor with a loud crash, followed belatedly by the bedsheet and a pillow. 

Only barely satisfied, Naruto crossed his arms over his chest and huffed. When the old lech finally scraped himself up and rose again, looking like a mix of death warmed over and a half-asleep ogre of Hell, he didn't even blink. 

"We need to get you new clothes," the man said, only barely even looking like he had felt the many kicks that Naruto had delivered to his spine. And head. And groin. 

Then again, he _had_ been mumbling something about Tsunade... 

Naruto abruptly tabled any thoughts of whatever the man had been dreaming about, homing in on what he had said instead. 

"Why's that?" He asked, incredulous. He _liked_ his blinding orange pants and jacket, _thankyouverymuch_. 

"Cuz your clothes're fallin' apart an' I only jus' noticed it," Jiraiya slurred back through a yawn. 

When Naruto actually stopped to look at himself -- _really_ look at himself -- he unwillingly had to agree. Not only was he genuinely outgrowing everything he owned, but his main outfit had been chewed up over the past year and a half or so of training. There was an orange patchwork of repairs to it, the zipper had been replaced four times and the most recent bit of damage, where Jiraiya had _blown his hand off_, had left the entire right sleeve mangled and slightly burnt at the elbow. Not to mention that subtle wreak of blood he had never quite managed to wash out. 

Almost on cue, a few seconds later, the plate on his forehead protector fell off. 

If not for Rule 25, he honestly thought he would've cried. That was the protector that _Iruka_ had given him. The one that had been his pride and joy, regardless of the dozens of minor scratches and dents on it. 

"See what I mean?" Jiraiya asked, throwing the sheets back on the bed and making a quick look at his left hand. Naruto, in-between sulking and wanting to bite someone's face off over the loss of his protector, felt a light breeze. Then he heard an uttered '_damnit_' and proceeded to tune out whatever else Jiraiya had to complain about. 

"Alright then... I'll buy you some new clothes. And some other stuff. It'll be my payment for your services as a bodyguard," he said at last, throwing on the oversized scroll that his entire life seemed to revolve around. "Along with being the best teacher on Earth, that is..." 

Naruto cursed under his breath and grabbed the plate off the floor. Then he yanked the worn out headband from his forehead and reluctantly threw it away. 

"This sucks," he said. 

"The protector looked suspicious this close to Cloud territory anyway," Jiraiya waved aside his complaints. 

"I'm keeping the plate." 

"Just keep it hidden then," Jiraiya replied, sitting down again to put his geta on. "You _did_ pay for us, right?" 

"... _Outta my damn wallet_," Naruto snorted. Gama-chan was looking so thin and unhealthy these days... 

"Good boy," Jiraiya said, then paused to crack his neck, knuckles and several other joints in ways that Naruto found quite painful to look at. "After we're done shopping, we'll start training." 

And that was that. Jiraiya stood up and left through the window, and Naruto followed suit with a grunt a few seconds later. They didn't bother checking out, and Naruto had been smart enough to avoid using his actual name when getting them rooms the previous night. In his haste to leave though, he never paid any attention to the calendar's date. 

It was October 10th.

* * *

Departure from the boats was the easy part. The hard part hadn't come until the Konoha ninjas, Hokage and all, had been detained by official samurai at the request of the local Ontai in charge of this city. If Tsunade had wanted, they could've razed the entire city to the ground for such an offense -- and they _might_ have even been able to get away with it. For whatever reason though, she had waved a hand dismissively to her subordinates and politely replied to the desire for the Ontai to have a meeting. 

Somewhere along the way, she had picked an 'honor guard.' Somehow, by the good or ill graces of her ancestors, Hinata had ended up in that guard. Along with her were Neji, Asuma and a heavy set man that bore a striking enough resemblance to Chouji that Hinata guessed him to be the portly Chuunin's father. While all five of them had about as much in common with each other personally as sand and dirt, all of them came from nobility. Tsunade was the grand-daughter of the First Hokage and great niece to the Second, and Asuma was the second son of the Third. Chouza _looked_ as if he came from samurai blood, and chances were that he did, and the Hyuuga cousins were both, well... _Hyuuga_. 

The end result though, was that Hinata was the only Konoha ninja present at the meeting who wasn't a Jounin or above. 

The room they were gathered in was large and spacious, with white walls and golden pillars, doors and windows. The floors were tiled with smooth marble and the mats for seating were arranged in such a way that the visitor was beneath the local Ontai. 

The man himself sat crosslegged in a low chair like a throne, the only thing visible of him being his head and neck. He seemed scrawny but rigid looking, and Hinata thought he looked something like a weasel. Flanking him were a pair of samurai, both in gold kimono and hakama, swords at their left sides. The one on the left reminded her, vaguely, of Naruto due to his spiky orange hair and blue eyes. The one on the right reminded her more of an older Kiba with an eyepatch and a crewcut. Two more samurai, both dressed similarly to the first but armed with naginata-styled spears, flanked each of the doors. 

The Konoha delegation, as Asuma had very _jokingly_ called the lot of them, was gathered before the man. Hinata and Neji were in the back, Chouza and Asuma flanked Tsunade and the Hokage had one of her best white robe and red-rimmed hat for the occasion. 

"Ontai Asshuku," Tsunade said with an unusually cordial voice. 

"Godaime Hokage," Asshuku replied with a stiff tone. 

"What did you summon me for?" She asked. Hinata admired her confidence and forcefulness. 

"It seems as if there was a matter concerning one or more of your ninjas last night," Asshuku answered. 

"We only arrived this morning," she replied. Hinata couldn't quite see it from this angle, but she knew Tsunade's brow was raised. 

"Oh? Well, perhaps you could enlighten me as to what one of your ninjas was doing in the red light district." 

Silence. 

"Excuse me?" 

"In the red light district. There was an incident involving one of your ninjas. His name was... I believe it was something like Usunaka Mari... Do. No, that wasn't it," the man trailed off, looking uncertain. Hinata spared a glance at Asuma's hands, but they were resting on his knees, not drawn into the seals for a genjutsu. 

"Uzumaki Naruto," the eye-patch samurai stated with an almost Kakashi-esque sideways glance at nothing. 

The name made her heart skip a beat. She could _sense_ the tension level rising from Neji, and Tsunade as well. If it showed on the woman's face though, she couldn't quite see it, and her voice didn't betray anything either. 

"There aren't any Leaf ninjas by that name, Asshuku," the Hokage said, utterly whimsical and amused sounding. 

"Are you certain of this?" The Ontai asked. He wasn't buying it. 

"Of course. We wouldn't dare risk hostilities in a foriegn nation this close to the Chuunin Exams. Konoha is a peaceful village, Asshuku. You don't have to worry about anything from us." 

This did little to set the man at ease. 

"You will have to understand if I'm... Distrustful of you for the time being," he said. 

Tsunade didn't reply. 

"If we find any connection between this... Uzumaki Naruto, and Konoha--" 

"You won't. No such ninja exists in my village," Tsunade cut him off. He continued as if he hadn't even heard her. 

"Rest assured that the Raikage will hear of it." 

"I'll be more than happy to relay news of this to him myself," she replied, standing abruptly. Hinata was the last of the four Leaf-nin to rise after her, having waited for the others. 

Asshuku squirmed. 

"Cloud-nin are patrolling this city. Don't do anything stupid," he ordered. 

"And unless you want to visit the Thunder Country Shogunate with your limbs chopped off and the wounds sealed shut, don't threaten me," Tsunade said with an _utterly_ cheerful tone of voice. With that, she turned and made for the door. 

Both spearmen practically jumped aside to let her through, and Hinata and the Jounin trio weren't far behind at all. Once out into the hallway, Tsunade lead the four of them around a corner, with Asuma lagging behind a bit to check for anyone tailing them. Then she stopped and he gave a nod as if to signal something. Hinata had been about to ask, but-- 

"None of you are to speak a word of this to _anyone_," she stated simply. "Not even to Sakura." 

"What do you think Naruto was doing in the red light district?" Asuma asked, his voice simply _dripping_ with amusement. 

"Probably trying to drag Jiraiya _out_ of it," Tsunade replied with an equally _un_amused tone. "If he's perverted Naruto into another mini-lecher, I'm going to disembowel him with his own paintbrush." 

"What about the incident itself?" Neji asked. 

"Chances are that someone put a hit out on Jiraiya. If not that, Akatsuki or Orochimaru had something to do with it," Tsunade answered, still not missing a beat. Her legendary beauty hadn't stunted her brains at all. 

"Akatsuki?" Neji replied, one brow raised. Hinata echoed the sentiment, though she didn't speak a word. 

Tsunade, Chouza and Asuma all paused and exchanged glances with each other. Hinata didn't know what to make of it at all, and Neji seemed equally perplexed. 

"W-what are we going to do about it?" Hinata finally sputtered. The silence had been too much to bear, and she didn't like thinking what a group with a name like that might want with Naruto or anyone close to him. 

"Nothing," Tsunade replied. Neji looked crestfallen, but Hinata was about to open her mouth in protest when the Hokage cut her off with a finger to the lips and a small, entirely too knowing smile. 

"Jiraiya might be a lecherous prick, and Naruto might be an idiot, but that boy's going to be Hokage someday. He'll be fine," she said, taking her finger away and then walking back into the hallway. 

Asuma shrugged and followed; Chouza glanced almost shamefully to the side and did the same. Neji stood back with his mouth hanging open and Hinata... 

Hinata was blushing furiously. 

Tsunade had practically looked right through her. She had said all the right things in the right way and ultimately filled the girl's heart with a kind of confidence she had only experienced once before when fighting the very Jounin standing next to her. In a way, Hinata no longer just admired the woman, she downright envied her. 

A few seconds later, she had grabbed Neji's sleeve and yanked him along after the other three, falling in step behind them.

* * *

The hermit's eyebrows were raised in shock. Nearby, one of the girls hanging up clothes had spared him an amazed look, and the girl across from her had actually dropped the hangar she was holding the shirt she was trying to stick it into. 

"... That bad?" Naruto asked, his entire face contorting into one big twitch. 

Jiraiya was silent. His brows slowly lowered back down and his mouth seemed to be working for words but his lips were closed. Annoyedly, Naruto started to turn back towards the dressing room but-- 

"_Hell no_," Jiraiya half-shouted. "I didn't think you had taste that good." 

"Eh?" He paused, looking himself over in the mirror. 

Without his forehead protector, he still felt virtually naked, but the clothes _did_ fit. It had been the very first outfit he'd picked out upon entering the store, though he had tried several others before throwing this one on. To replace the orange getup meant getting a new signature look -- even _Naruto_ knew to take it seriously -- but it had been more difficult than he'd anticipated. 

The first outfit he tried on was a black pair of hakama and a kimono shirt with some traditional geta and white socks. Jiraiya had stared at him with an unimpressed look before punting him back into the changing room. After that, he popped back out in a blue t-shirt, a sleeveless reddish-orange overshirt and matching pants with blue wristbands and boot-sandals. Jiraiya had again punted him back in. A little later, Naruto stepped back out in a blue tracksuit with a black stripe down the shoulders, sleeves, sides of the body and legs. 

That time, Jiraiya had stared at him like he was a ghost and then _really_ punted him back into the changing room. 

The fourth time Naruto stepped out of the room, he was dressed more comfortably in a pair of orange pants that stopped just about halfway down the shin. Above that was an orange-and-black jacket with a turtleneck collar. Beneath the jacket, he had kept the blue t-shirt from earlier. He had wanted something blue with the jacket itself, but... 

Black was starting to grow on him. 

"Really?" He asked, pulling on the sleeves and stretching around for a few seconds. 

"Really," Jiraiya answered, just before turning over his shoulder and leering at one of the shop girls. Without Naruto's want or consent, the man called out to them. "Doesn't he look good?" 

When both of them practically _whistled_ at him, Naruto felt that he had hit paydirt. 

"I'll go with this then," he said, grinning impishly. 

After putting the other sets of clothing up, Jiraiya had actually bought Naruto's new clothes _while he was wearing them_ and then proceeded to buy him a product being sold as a 'ninja headband,' ostensibly as a goodhearted jab. 

Really though, it was just a black bandana with a blank plastic plate on it. 

Once they were outside, Jiraiya ripped the plate off the bandana and exposed it as a strip of cloth with four metal rings in it -- perfect for attaching a _real_ protector plate. Wordlessly, he handed it over to Naruto and then made to throw the boy's old clothes away. 

Naruto stopped him. Just long enough to rip the shoulder patch off of his old jacket before consigning the battered thing to a public trash can. 

After that, Naruto had tucked the patch and the bandana into his jacket, where he had also managed to hide the forehead protector plate as well. One of the good things about it was that it had a relatively large pair of inside pockets. He could customize the rest of it later, when they were out of this city and back on the road to nowhere. 

"What now?" Naruto asked. 

"More shopping," Jiraiya answered matter-of-factly. 

It was still relatively early in the morning. Stands and shops were opening up all over, people were hustling through the streets around carts, some pulled by hand, others by horse. There was a feeling of _life_ all around, and while it wasn't anything like Konoha, Naruto found that he was actually starting to like it. At least here, the people might not have noticed him, but that wasn't intentional apathy or hatred. It was because they sincerely didn't know him, and when he talked to people, they were actually _friendly_. 

It was something he could get used to far too easily. Perhaps that was why he didn't object to Jiraiya's statement that they would be leaving the moment this Chimi business had been resolved. 

A little later, they had arrived in another shop. This one looked more like a weapons shop than anything else, and it had the merchandise on the walls to prove it. 

Swords(Naruto briefly considered asking for one), spears, axes, knives of all kinds and even a few odd looking whip-like weapons he didn't know the name of. Jiraiya ignored all of that though, bylining for the back of the store and dragging Naruto right along with him until they arrived at a small cub of shelves lined with scrolls of varying sizes. 

At that, Jiraiya let go. When he spoke this time, his voice was low and rougher than usual. 

"Pick one. This'll be important." 

Disappointed and not even looking, Naruto reached out and grabbed one. When he presented it to Jiraiya, the man regarded him with a curious look and a smile. 

"Good choice," he said, then lead Naruto away from the cub. 

After purchasing the scroll, the two made their way back out into the street, where Jiraiya lead him around to an alley. When the two went in and were out of view, the older man pulled out Naruto's shuriken holster and the pouches usually hanging from his belt and presented them to him. 

"Put 'em on." 

"Won't they make me stick out like a sore thumb?" Naruto asked, taking the pouches first and buttoning them onto the back of his old belt. At least that didn't need replacing. 

"_I_ stick out enough for the both of us. Long as we're not wearing forehead protectors though, no-one can trace us to Konoha just by looking at us," Jiraiya explained, handing Naruto the holster. 

Without the usual tape, he strapped it to his leg and let out a half-sigh of relief. Even if he didn't have his forehead protector, at least now he had his _teeth_ back. 

"And now what?" He asked, straightening up and looking back to the street. 

"Now we get lunch." 

"Then?" 

"Then I work you like a dog." 

Naruto could _hardly_ supress his enthusiasm. 

"Just don't blow my hand off again..." 

"Wasn't plannin' on it. I'll try for the rest o' your arm instead." 

_ Really. _

* * *

When Hyuuga Hinata arrived at Ikazuchikougai, she had expected the stay to be mercilessly short and formal, preceeded by a reunion sorting and report, changing into a formal yukata and then having to pass through the city as if she were a diplomat. All of this would undoubtedly be followed by an uncomfortable change in the mountains, in the presence of God only knew how many _male_ ninjas -- along with Sakura and the other girls as well -- which would in turn be followed by a few weeks as they made their way towards Kumogakure. 

She hadn't been counting on the meeting with Asshuku, nor had she been counting on this... 

"Alright everyone! Listen up!" Tsunade's voice _dripped_ with authority. 

The woman had gathered them all into a meeting room in one of the five inns they were being spread through. They were packed like sardines, and she had resorted to standing on the shoulders of Chouza just to be sure everyone could see and hear her. 

Hinata and Neji had both elected to stick to the doors. Byakugan activated, they were watching through the walls for potential spies, even though Shikaku and Asuma were stationed outside. 

"I know you're all tired from the first and second legs of our journey, and there's no telling how rough the last part of the trip will be. Because of that, I'm going to let us all take a day or two to rest in Ikazuchikougai. After that, I expect you to double-time it to Kumogakure like the fires of _Hell_ are nipping at your feet!" 

The Godaime paused for a moment, surveying the crowd before her. After letting it soak in, she spoke up once more. 

"I expect you all to be on your best behavior! _Do not attract the attentions of anyone_, and do _not_ go anywhere alone! I want every last Genin to be in the presence of at least two other ninja -- your teammates, if at all possible -- at all times! If anyone of you breaks that rule, _I will know about it and the consequences will not be pleasant_!" 

Tsunade was quite terrifying sometimes... 

When it was all said and done though, she dismissed the myriad collection of Genin and Jounin with all the authority of a general at war. Hinata and Neji were the first ones out. Almost as one, they pushed the doors open and swept aside for the onrush of ninjas. It was literally like watching a flood of movement, and for once, every single one of them was as talkative as normal people. 

Hinata didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, she waited. 

Kiba was out first, laughing his head off at either a joke from another Genin, or, more likely, at an insult he made to another Genin. Regardless, Neji yanked him from the crowd with such speed that Akamaru didn't even yelp, instead retreating into the hood of Kiba's jacket. The younger Genin briefly glared iced _death_ at Neji, then seemed to melt back to normal and started rambling about someone having ticks in some very _uncomfortable_ places. 

Sakura was the last out, following Tsunade and-- 

"Will you at _least_ give me a hint?" 

Feeling quite inquisitive, apparently. 

The pink-haired Genin, complete with the new hairstyle and what Kiba liked to mockingly refer to as 'Fuck Me Boots' -- a comment that usually caused him to end up face down in the nearest puddle of mud(assuming a more putrid substance wasn't available) -- was practically dangling from one of Tsunade's ponytails, looking passively annoyed. 

The Hokage wasn't even acknowledging her presence. Or her questions. 

Normally, Hinata wasn't one to defy an order, but this time... 

Well, Sakura _was_ one of Naruto's closest friends, and she _did_ have a right to know and-- 

And before she could stop herself, Hinata spoke up. 

"I th-thought we w-w-weren't going t-to do anything, L-Lady Tsunade?" She asked, having to keep her hands clenched into fists and hidden in the sleeves of her yukata to keep from poking her fingertips together. She was fighting off the urge to chew through her lower lip as well. 

Tsunade halted in her tracks. Neji shot her a sidelong glance that Hinata _knew_ was probably filled with a kind of mortal terror. _'What have you done?'_ He probably wanted to shout at her. Sakura seemed to stop as well, suddenly quite aware that she had been left out of the loop on something important. 

She didn't look happy. Neither did Kiba. 

"Sarutobi once told me," the woman began, deliberately turning towards Hinata with a smile. "You can do a lot when you do nothing at all." 

For a short time, the two looked at each other. Sakura and Neji both looked half-mystified -- for different reasons, no doubt -- and Kiba looked half-ready to stomp off. 

"I understand," Hinata said after a few seconds, suddenly feeling a little more at ease with herself. 

"I thought you would," Tsunade replied, looking down the hall and obviously setting her sights on a Jounin who was walking around with a pig on a leash. "And as it's a woman's perogative to change her mind, feel free to tell these two. They look half-ready to start torturing you for information anyway," she added as an afterthought. 

With a wave of her hand, the Godaime waltzed off, leaving Hinata alone with a feeling of intense relief, two team-mates who were glaring holes in the back of her head and an unwitting Jounin who looked ready to kill both of them at a pindrop. 

_ End Part Two_

* * *

**Author's Note:** A few things this time...

October 10th is Naruto's birthday.

Naruto's outfits were all hidden gags. They consisted of: Son Goku(Dragonball Z), Kurosaki Ichigo(Bleach) and Yondaime's childhood outfit, which(from what I've seen of it) was a blue track suit with black stripes.

Chouza looked ashame for a simple reason. Go back and read the first chapter of the Naruto manga, because he was in the crowd plotting to kill Naruto instead of just dragging him back with the scroll he took. When Naruto ended up becoming one of his son's few good friends, I decided to give Chouza a change of heart and the shame to go along with it.

The two samurai flanking Asshuku were visually based on combinations of Naruto and Ichigo, and Kiba and Vice Captain Hisagi Shuuhei from Bleach.

I also get the feeling I might've overwritten Hinata's stutter, but that can probably be attributed to the fact that she's so close to Thunder territory, yanno? 


	3. Equities of Equilibrium

**Foreword:** Soundtrack is as follows.

**Scene One:** Hack Sign - Key of the Twilight  
**Scene Two:** Samurai Champloo - Death Wish  
**Scene Three:** Inuyasha - Kagome and Inuyasha  
**Scene Four:** Samurai Champloo - 1st Samurai  
**Scene Five:** Hack Sign - Broken Wings  
**Scene Six:** Rurouni Kenshin - Departure  
**Scene Seven:** Rurouni Kenshin - Departure(Piano and Acoustic Solo)

* * *

**The Indirect Approach  
**_Part Three: Equities of Equilibrium  
_Bladed Bull's Eye

* * *

The run up the cliff could've, should've and _would've_ been easy, if not for a singular technicality that just blew the whole thing straight to Hell: Jiraiya was _not a light load to carry_. 

The excuse had been that his chakra was still messed up and he was trying to save up to do something important. In Naruto's eyes, it was just more of the toad lecher's sadism shining through. Regardless, Naruto had been forced to piggyback the man all the way up the cliff. All six feet, three inches and two hundred pounds of him -- not counting the additional weight of that thirty pound scroll or all the _crap_ the man carried with him aside from it.

Four times, Naruto had lost his footing on the way up and fallen back down. Four times, Jiraiya had shown uncanny speed for a poisoned man, flipped them so that Naruto wound up crashing face-first into the ground and somehow, _every single time_, Jiraiya landed on top of him. On both feet. Complete with those geta sandals _grinding into Naruto's ribcage_ so fiercely that he could feel his internal organs shuffling about like a swarm of eels just to try and compensate for it all.

On the fifth go round though, Jiraiya-be-damned, Naruto made it up to the top of the cliff, staggered a few steps and fell over. Jiraiya conveniently dismounted right before Naruto hit the dirt, and _again_, those damned geta ground across his back. This time, Jiraiya seemed to make it a point to walk on him in order to get to wherever it was he wanted to go.

After almost a minute of tasting dirt, Naruto finally looked up. His entire face was twitching spastically, and his whole body hurt -- from the falls, from the sandals, from the exertion. Jiraiya didn't even notice.

Instead, the toad hermit bit his thumb until it bled, ran through the seals, then slammed the hand into the ground.

"KUCHIYOSE: GAMA KENSEI!"

A split second later, with a huge _puff_ of pinkish smoke, tinged green around the edges, Naruto found himself staring at one of the strangest frogs he had ever laid eyes on.

It was roughly the same size as the toad that Jiraiya had ridden on when they had first met. Its skin was an ugly mixture of bloody red, striped with grey and spotted with brown warts. It wore an open kimono and nothing else, with a dozen small scars across its face and a single great scar across its chest. At its back was sheathed a sword so large it would've given a Mist-nin penis envy.

When the smoke finished clearing, the frog shifted a bit to regard him, then heaved up onto its hind legs. Its arms crossed over its scarred chest and its expression looked set in stone.

"**You called me for _this_?**" He boomed out, utterly displeased.

"Yeah," Jiraiya replied, _almost_ apologetic.

"Who the hell is this?" Naruto finally sputtered out while dusting himself off.

"_This_ is Gama Kensei. The finest swordsman that the Toads have ever produced," Jiraiya answered, slapping the huge bullfrog on the back and grinning like an idiot.

"... And you want me to fight him," Naruto concluded, suddenly feeling a very strange mixture of excitement, glee, disappointment and uneasiness.

"**Hell no**," Kensei replied.

"And _why not_?" Naruto growled.

"**You ain't got a sword. Jiraiya knows I only cross blades with those worthy of me**," Kensei answered.

When Naruto glared at the hermit, he was grinning from ear to ear. He had obviously known this was going to happen...

"_Then what's the freaking point_?"

"The _point_, Naruto," Jiraiya chimed in, "is that you need to go get a sword if you want to learn anything."

Naruto grimaced. Then reached to his side and slipped a few fingers into his shuriken holster with an irate look on his face.

"_Bite me_," he finally let out, hurling a trio of shuriken at the bullfrog.

Even as the projectiles were closing in, Naruto was rushing in behind them, having drawn a kunai in one hand and another pack of shuriken in the other. As the distance closed, Kensei remained stationary, and then--

It felt like a freight train ran him over.

He didn't quite see how the frog took out the shuriken, but its tongue somehow caught him across the face with enough force to spin him around twice. Before he could even hit the ground, its foot snapped out and nailed him in the stomach so violently that he could _feel_ the bones distancing from each other in his neck from the whiplash it caused. A few seconds later, he hit the ground with a skid on his back.

"_Get a sword or don't bother, shitsqueek_," Kensei bellowed at him.

Naruto was about to try and get up -- so that he could _kick that big toad's ass_, of course -- when Jiraiya stepped up to his side. The man towered over him even more now that he was sprawled out across the ground, and that look on his face said nothing of good intentions.

"Now that we've established the reason, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a mission," he stated.

"Eh?"

"Your mission, if you want to learn anything from me at all, is to go into the city and take the sword of a samurai. Sheathe and all. Then come back and defeat Kensei," Jiraiya explained.

"Sounds simple enough..."

"There's a catch."

"Fuck you."

"Women only, thanks," the old man smirked, then continued. "The catch is that you have to do it _without being detected by anyone_."

Naruto grimaced and sat up on his elbows, glaring death at Kensei.

"Should be easy," he muttered.

"Did I mention that there's a small army of ninja from Konoha here?"

"_Go_. _To_. _Hell_."

"THAT'S THE SPIRIT!"

Somewhere between cursing Jiraiya's mother and wanting to strangle Kensei with his own tongue, the toad hermit punted him over the the edge of the cliff. As he was falling, Naruto had only one real thought running through his head...

_"What the hell am I supposed to do now?" _

He didn't have an answer.

* * *

The landing had been easier than he expected, but his ego rightfully attributed that to the surge of chakra he had pumped through his feet on impact with the ground. It hurtled him forward and allowed him to surge onward without even missing a beat. 

The run to the city didn't take long, as it was built so close to the cliff. Along the way though, Naruto had just enough time to come up with something akin to a plan. It was brazen, stupid, borderline suicidal and very likely to get him spotted by his comrades...

But hey, if he was gonna do something this troublesome, he might as well do it with style.

"Henge," he said to himself, just as he reached the bottom of the hill before entering the city. When he emerged into view, his appearance had only slightly changed -- his hair had turned solid black and his whisker-like facemarks were gone. His eyes had turned black and the orange of his pants and jacket had changed to match.

Were he to look in a mirror, he would've thought he looked something like a bastard Uchiha.

He wasn't far off the mark at all.

Once he was in the city, he decided, he would set his plan into motion.

* * *

"... And that's everything," Neji finished. 

Sakura and Kiba were quiet. Unusually so for people like them. Hinata didn't really know what to make of it, because even their body language was a blank slate. After a time though, Kiba finally shrugged dismissively and Sakura let out a relieved sigh.

The four of them had broken from the main pack of the Genin and Jounin a while ago, and by now, they were clustered together at a booth like they owned the place. Their only companion was a young woman with dazzlingly blue hair, pale skin and cloudy eyes with a far-away look to them. She had served them without asking a word about the Konoha protectors all four were wearing -- Kiba's on his forehead, Hinata's around her neck, Sakura's like a hairband and Neji's in the same place as Kiba. Hinata had switched back to her regular clothing by now, but Neji still insistently wore his increasingly trademarked white kimono outfit.

"Well," Sakura finally spoke up. "At least he's okay."

Kiba and Akamaru echoed the sentiment, though the former was stuffing his face with ramen. They had all agreed upon ramen for dinner. It wasn't anyone's favorite -- though Hinata had acquired a bit of a taste for it -- but everyone could agree on it. Kiba had probably skipped meals all through the time spent at sea, as he lacked the stomach of a sailor.

"Then we're all in agreement and there's nothing to worry about," Neji replied, finally taking up chopsticks and going to work on his meal.

"Y-You don't think anything bad will happen to him while we're here, do you?" Hinata felt compelled to ask, staring over her shoulder and into the street.

"I doubt it," Sakura replied, though her voice was edged with a shred of uncertainty that had probably been sitting beneath the surface.

"I doubt anyone's stupid enough to try and attack a guy whose comrades are out in force right now," Kiba pointed out between gulps.

Hinata simply nodded to them both and turned away from her food. Kiba promptly stole it, but she didn't mind too much. The streets were more interesting to her. They were _alive_ tonight, filled with the hustle and bustle of a city that never sleeps. People flooded through like water, blending into a virtual sea of faces -- all with their own stories to tell, all unique and yet all utterly unidentifiable from the next person. Men, women, children. Animals too, though only a few horses and someone's escaped rooster.

It was an overwhelming sight to a girl like her. At once, it repelled her and lured her in. The unending drone of the crowds were more than enough to make up for the silence of her teammates and Neji, and the mingling scents in the air were almost intoxicating. While all her senses were ultimately geared towards her eyes, she couldn't help but drown in the flow of information to the others.

Some part of her almost wished she could scoop a hand into the crowd and taste it. Then the part of her that spoke with Kiba's voice informed her of how perverted that sounded and she had to fight tooth and nail to keep from blushing.

Thankfully, none of the others noticed it. Except for Neji, but then, he noticed everything...

Or maybe he didn't?

As Kiba started speaking up about how Naruto was too much of an idiot for his own good, Hinata noticed a streak of movement in the crowds.

Someone was running through them, dodging between people so quickly as to remain unnoticed by virtually everyone in his path. Relatively short compared to those around him, he ducked and ran against the flow of people, and for a split second -- a single all-encompassing moment that seemed to stretch on for an eternity -- Hinata was able to see him in perfect detail.

His hair was black, his clothes were black and his eyes were black. He was missing the tell-tale stripes, but it was _him_.

When the moment ended, Hinata was left breathless and stunned. She didn't quite know how she had recognized him so easily, but...

"I think... I just saw him," she mumbled out. If anyone heard her, they didn't reply.

* * *

When he finally came to a stop, he was just outside the walls of the governor's palace. It was a large estate, colored a gleaming mix of white and gold with red symbols painted on each gate. 

It would've been easy to stop here, mug one of the gate guards and take his sword...

But Uzumaki Naruto was not a shortcutter. He wanted the _best_ sword that he could get his hands on, and logically, that meant taking it from one of the Ontai's personal guard.

With that in mind, Naruto took a deep breath and leapt over the wall, clearing it in a single hurdle. He landed with a pair of small splashes on the mote, chakra pooling at his feet to keep himself from sinking on impact as he rushed forward in another low run. He could feel his heart racing, and more than anything else, he felt _excited_ by all of this. This was what it must feel like to be a _real_ ninja -- a master of the shadows, using stealth, guile and speed to achieve one's mission, unstoppable and undetectable by--

_"Shit,"_ he thought, jumping up off the water and barely making it onto another perfectly smooth wall as a nearby guard shined a light down into the mote.

For a harrowing ten seconds, Naruto had to literally _cling_ to the wall to keep himself out of the path of the guard's light. Pressing himself up against it, he could almost feel the light piercing the air just a few inches away from him, licking at his blackened hair as if it were the hottest and heaviest of flames. He didn't breathe because the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He didn't open his eyes for fear that he might see the light shimmering just a precious hair's width from his body. He didn't even move because he feared that if he put anymore chakra into the wall, he might blow himself off of it.

At last though, the guard turned the light away and went back to work. With only a moment to gasp for the air he hadn't been breathing, Naruto abruptly surged forward.

In a run, he made his way up the wall, passing between windows and finally jumping up onto the edge of the palace's pagoda roof. With only one hand holding it, he gave a pull and swung himself up and out of sight, rolling to a stop before taking a few seconds to rest.

Then he sat up again, stood and got a running start up the roof. With one jump, he made it up to another level, only to crash _quite_ loudly into a window and break it open.

This time, he landed with a roll on his shoulders, one arm and finally both feet. He was just outside the governor's bedroom, met by the two people he wanted to see more than anything else in this world right now...

The Ontai's personal guards. One was orange-haired and blue-eyed, the other looked like a scruffier, older Kiba with an eyepatch. Both wore orange, both were already drawing their swords out, and Naruto--

Naruto smiled.

"Greetingssss from Otagakure," he said, intentionally dragging out the 's' sound. It was a pathetic imitation of a snake's lisping sound, but having them hate Orochimaru's village for what he was about to do was _perfectly_ acceptable in Naruto's eyes.

Neither samurai responded to him. Instead, the eye-patch wearer barked an order to his apparent subordinate--

"Kenji, to the left!"

And lunged in from the right. Naruto dodged to the side, leaving the razor-sharp edge of Patch's katana to slit the air in his wake. As he was sidestepping though, he managed to catch the orange-haired samurai -- Kenji, his name was -- ducking around to Patch's left.

With a swiftness that would've escaped him just a year ago, Naruto swept a leg up and crashed his shin into Patch's chin, throat and underarms, his other leg sweeping into the back of the man's knees and bowling him over in one fluid motion. His hand found the floor before his legs had even untangled themselves from Patch's body. Kenji was incoming with his sword held wide in a slicing position.

The action to follow was quick and almost choreographed like a dance. Naruto pulled himself out of the air and Kenji lashed out. His katana whipped right through the space that Naruto had previously occupied, passing within inches of cleaving Patch's face and arms off. As the black-haired ninja pushed himself back up into a handspring, Kenji recovered and made for a quick stabbing motion, only to again hit air.

Now Naruto was flipping over him, and Patch finally hit the floor. Kenji took two steps forward and whipped around again, slashing upward and almost chopping through Naruto's groin in the process. He missed though, because Naruto reversed his flip just before the blade could make impact.

His feet knifed up into the ceiling and found purchase on it, chakra molding into the soles of his feet and sandals to hold him in place as he crouched, moving just out of the reach of Kenji's second slice.

The samurai backpedaled, and Naruto held his position long enough to take stock of the situation.

Patch was starting to get up, Kenji had assumed a stance and looked so calm that it was almost terrifying.

_"That Kenji guy's tougher... His sword'll do." _

With that though, Naruto leapt into action. Almost blindly, he lunged straight at the orange-haired samurai, who replied with an uppercut of the sword, so swift that it was little more than a blur of silver and--

Naruto executed a Kawarimi with a Kage Bunshin. While Kenji annihilated the clone, he swept around back, wound up and then...

_BAM! _

The orange-haired samurai collapsed with a distinct thud, bleeding from the back of the head. Naruto wasted no time in stripping him of his sword and sheathe, having to pry the former from his unconscious fingers. By then, Patch was on his feet and coming in with a loud shout.

Naruto fell back to avoid having his head and right arm taken off. Then he rolled to the side in order to keep from being stabbed into the ground.

Sweeping himself up to a kneeling position with movement similar to a breakdancer, Naruto lashed out with Kenji's sheathe, cracking it across Patch's arm. The man let out a muffled scream, yet still clung to his sword with both hands.

He pulled it from the floor and Naruto's course of action was clear...

He stabbed with the sword.

Its blade hit the floor and his entire body swung up, using it for leverage in a kick to the jaw that would've done Rock Lee proud. An instant later, Patch became the second man in this city whose head Naruto had planted into a ceiling.

With that, he stood up straight, sheathed Kenji's sword and took a look around.

"Sorry 'bout the mess," he mumbled out, though he didn't mean a word of it.

Naruto turned and leapt back towards the broken window he had come in through, and that was when...

"If you're going to come for an assassination, _do it all the way_!"

"Oh _shit_!"

Everything went to Hell.

* * *

"**Why'd you summon me, anyway?**" 

"I already told you," Jiraiya answered, pausing to erase a small mistake on his latest sketch. It was one of the new characters for the Icha Icha books -- an arch-villian, you see. A militant lesbian ninja from--

"**No, you didn't. I asked you the same question as before and you just said 'yeah'.**"

Jiraiya frowned.

"The kid's up against a swordsman of Kumogakure," he replied.

"**An' you want _me_ to train him on how to use a sword? So it's a fair playing field?**" Kensei asked, somewhere between amused and annoyed.

"Hell no. He's got even less talent for that than the last kid I put against you," Jiraiya shot back, getting the lines on the cleavage right this time.

"**... Ahhhh... You just want the kid to learn to stop being an idiot then.**"

"More or less."

"**Won't work.**"

"Worth a try."

The two were quiet upon hearing an explosion coming from somewhere in the city. It sounded like a crack of thunder, and there was an accompanying flash of blue to go along with it.

"**Good reason.**"

"Exactly," Jiraiya replied, utterly unconcerned.

* * *

"We have _got_ to stop _meeting like this_, don't you agree?" 

It had been simple. Quick. _Agonizing_.

The doors to the governor's bedroom had blown right off the hinges. From there, the Cloud ninja had appeared like a lightning bolt, leaving Naruto to turn and face him only a quarter of a second before the tip of the man's sword found the right side of his stomach. The actual blade itself hadn't hurt so badly -- or maybe he just hadn't had the time to properly register the pain -- but the feeling of the shock going off _right inside of his body_ had been enough to mute every other sensation he could've had. It was like going blind, deaf and mute amidst a background cascade of numbness and pain, all of it mingling together so viciously that he couldn't even hear if he was screaming or not.

Ultimately, the stab had been shallow. They were both going in the same direction, and when they had passed the edge of the window out over the roof, Tensho had swung his entire body up while pulling his still-sparkling sword from Naruto's body. His foot connected with the wound, chakra pooled into it, and a second later, the man had used it to hurl Naruto into the pagoda.

He landed on his face with a hard skid, and somewhere along the way, the Henge broke completely.

And now, he was getting up. He could barely feel his entire torso, and the insides of his arms and legs felt as if they were on _fire_. How he had kept a hold on Kenji's sword and sheathe was a complete mystery, but his stomach and face were both bleeding now and he could vaguely register the warmth of each wound trickling down the rest of him.

Chimi Tensho allowed him to stand. Even allowed him to turn around and face his would-be executioner.

"The irony of all of this is absurd," the man stated, sweeping his sword up until its edge was aimed at Naruto and its point oriented straight up to the skies. One hand pressed along the back of it, and the width of it seemed to rest perfectly between his eyes. The whole thing gleamed a bitter red in the moonlight.

"What the fug're you talkin' about?" Naruto slurred out, only just now starting to get feeling back into his tongue.

"I come to assassinate Jiraiya, you come to assassinate Ontai Asshuku and our paths inevitably cross because of it."

"Got the wrong idea, asshole," Naruto replied, wiping blood onto his sleeve before rushing the same hand to his stomach.

"... Then why else would you come here?" Tensho asked, his expression -- what little Naruto could see of it through the mask, at least -- faltering a bit.

"To get what I need to _kick your ass_," Naruto answered, wincing as a fresh surge of blood pulsed from his stomach wound. With that, he held up Kenji's sword and grinned.

"... You think you'll beat me just because you have a sword?" Chimi uttered out incredulously.

"_Yeah_," Naruto shot back, again wincing. The Kyuubi wasn't doing its job...

"... I'm at once flattered and disgusted by that," the Cloud-nin replied, finally whipping his sword down and splattering the blood from it onto the roof. Naruto had almost jumped at the sight of such jerky movements.

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Flattered that you hold me in such high regards. Disgusted that you think you can win just because you've got a weapon," Tensho answered, sounding almost... Civil about all of this.

There wasn't another sound for a few seconds. Then, Chimi spoke.

"_Uzumaki Naruto_," he began, dropping into what Naruto was starting to identify as the stance for Raiheijin's thrusting variation.

"I hereby swear to _kill you_."

This time, when Tensho thrust at him, Naruto was ready. With a sideways jump, he cleared the attack without getting hit by it. Unfortunately, he landed awkwardly and lost his balance, slipping and rolling down the pagoda roof before catching himself in a crouch just short of the ledge. Chimi continued on for several dozen yards before he finally slammed a foot down and skidded to a halt, almost ripping his sword out of its previous path and jumping at him.

"_Shunseito Kazuma_," he shouted back, just before jumping away and leaving the man to slice a chunk of the roof's edge off.

"I hereby vow to _beat you_," he finished, just before turning away and tucking the sword -- sheathe and all -- into his belt.

It was a long drop, but he was going to be able to make it to the wall and--

"DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY THAT EASILY!"

When the thrust hit this time, Naruto didn't even feel it.

Instead, the world blinked from black to white a hundred times in a single instant, and when it was over, he looked down to see the katana piercing out of the right side of his chest, surrounded by a mixture of blood, vapor and sparks of blue.

The next thing he knew, Tensho had driven him through the wall of a three story building.

Almost instantly after the impact, the first thing Naruto noticed was that the katana had been pulled from his body. Before he had even hit the floor, Chimi had jumped off of his back, leaving Naruto to land with a skid thud and a skid. He could hear women screaming, then became distantly aware that they were in the top floor of a casino.

Without paying it any more attention though, Naruto heaved himself up. He was fated to become the Hokage, _damnit_, he would _not die here_.

"I'm amazed you can still breathe. Nevermind actually moving."

Tensho was speaking to him. The man was standing not too far away, near the hole that had been made with their entrance. Naruto paid him little mind, trying instead to pull himself to his feet. When that failed, he rolled onto his back and glared at the Cloud-nin, who seemed to be smiling _viciously_ through his mask.

"You've been pierced twice with Raiheijin. I don't think anyone else has ever survived even one."

"I'm not gonna die here, you bastard," Naruto sputtered out. It was suddenly becoming almost impossible to breathe...

_And the Kyuubi still wasn't helping him! _

"I'll pass that off as juvenile stupidity," Kazuma replied, slowly sheathing his sword after flicking the blood off. People were stampeding downstairs by now.

Naruto had been about to reply when a foot of coughing took over. His vision was starting to tint red, and it was becoming even more difficult to breathe in the process.

"How does it feel to know you're going to drown to death in your own blood?"

He didn't answer. Not with words, anyway.

When Kazuma posed his question, Naruto answered it with action.

His hands whipped into a familiar seal, and an instant later, one Uzumaki Naruto became three.

The first one grabbed him under the arms and jumped up through the ceiling. The second rushed at Tensho and met its end from a sweeping kick into the groin. The third, however...

The third Kage Bunshin became a giant Blast Note. The very instant Naruto and his remaining doppleganger were clear of the building, the entire third floor ceased to exist as anything but a giant fireball. The shockwave alone was enough to send the two flying several hundred feet up into the air, casting them away from Tensho and towards the cliff.

They fell short, landing atop another building almost a block from where they had started out.

The impact jarred him so badly that he almost threw up, and that's when it finally happened.

Kyuubi woke up.

The first thing Naruto did was bite back a scream as he felt his teeth started to sharpen and elongate. His eyes shifted between red and blue, and his wounds started to heal. The blood cleared from his lungs and evaporated from his face, stomach and chest, but before it could heal all the way, the demon fox stopped short. Nine-Tails' chakra left him as quickly as it had come, leaving the wounds only just healed enough that he wasn't in danger of bleeding to death.

All in all, the process took a full three minutes. By then, the streets were in a panic, and his remaining doppleganger had set itself up next to him as a look-out. They were safe from the eyes of someone on the street, but...

"He'll be coming soon," the clone said.

"I know," Naruto replied, jerking himself upright and almost falling over because of it. Even with the blood out of his lungs, it hurt just to breathe right now.

"I see him," the clone said again, stepping back and reaching for its holster.

"Henge," Naruto ordered, though the command had already been given before he spoke it.

With a puff of smoke, the doppleganger became a giant four-bladed shuriken, resembling blackened katana blades on an oversized key ring. When he grabbed it and looked back, Naruto could see the shadowed image of his pursuer, leaping from rooftop to rooftop at blinding speeds. He was only barely visible against the backdrop of the night sky and the still-burning fires from the Blast Note Kage Bunshin, but it was enough...

"EAT SHIT!" He screamed out, just before hurling the shuriken and turning away.

He felt the star getting annihilated by a sword swipe before he had even gotten off the roof. Paying it no mind though, Naruto jumped up and made a break for it with everything he had left. He didn't bother disguising himself again, nor did he bother with any real attempts at stealth anymore.

* * *

It was like a dream, really. 

One moment, they had all been filing out of the booth. The next, Kiba was shouting to get back out of the way, and then Sakura had found reason to backhand someone. Neji grabbed her and pulled her from the other two, and together, they melted into the crowds. Kiba and Akamaru followed suit with a leap, and Sakura somehow appeared next to them barely a second later. There was screaming, shouting and mayhem all around...

But somehow, at the right moment, when no-one else even knew what was going on, Hinata found the urge to look up.

When she did, she saw him again. The real Naruto.

He was running from rooftop to rooftop, obviously trying to get away from something, but the look on his face took her breath away. It was like fire had been liquified into his eyes and turned blue, and even though there were bloodstains on his clothes, he looked sharper now than he ever had before. His forehead protector was missing, but a sword was sheathed at his side, and when he finally jumped again, Hinata honestly felt she was looking at some sort of slow-motion scene from a movie.

The moon framed him, and somewhere along the line, she thought she saw him looking into the crowd and noticing her but then...

Sakura grabbed her by the shoulders and jumped. A few seconds later, they were all standing atop an awning, clustered together. Neji's Byakugan was active, Akamaru was howling and Kiba's hood was up. Sakura looked frenzied and Hinata...

Hinata just looked in the direction Naruto had been headed in. The last she saw of him was a black-and-orange speck with blonde hair, diving through the skylight of a bath house and vanishing inside.

"What the _hell_ caused all this!" Sakura shouted out, her voice a little throatier than normal.

"Naruto," Hinata answered, so quickly that Neji wasn't even able to start speaking. The Jounin had obviously caught sight of their missing comrade, even if only a fleeting glimpse.

"... _Why_ am I not surprised?" The pink-haired Genin replied after a few seconds.

It was obvious that she was speaking for all of them.

_End Part Three_

**Author's Note:** Oh, how I'm going to have fun with this one...

Naruto's disguise was basically Obito. If Kakashi had seen him, he probably would've gone into conniptions over seeing a ghost.

I tried to display Naruto's resourcefulness in this Part, but I ain't done yet.

I also tried to downplay Hinata's stutter a small bit since I overwrote it in the last Part.

I had originally intended to bring in a few of the frogs that actually appear in the Naruto manga, but Kensei was the only one who fit. I created him, and if you can point out any otherone-ton bullfrog sword-saints, I'll be prying my jaw out of China for a month.


	4. Shrapnel Spirits

**Foreword:** Soundtrack is as follows.

**Scene One:** Gundam SEED - Flickering Truth  
**Scene Two:** Gundam SEED - Battle Against the Dominion  
**Scene Three:** Naruto - Alone  
**Scene Four:** Naruto - Hokage  
**Scene Five:** Rurouni Kenshin - Departure

* * *

**The Indirect Approach**_  
Part Four: Shrapnel Spirits_  
Lament for the Flickering Star

* * *

Somewhere in between crashing through the skylight of an almost-empty bath house and stumbling out into an alley through a side door, Uzumaki Naruto came to the realization that he was in over his head. Truly, seriously in over his head. 

It wasn't like Zabuza, who was arrogant and underestimated him. It wasn't like Haku, who was too gentle to kill. It wasn't like Orochimaru, who had mostly regarded him as a simple pest, nor was it akin to facing off with the Sound Five -- all of whom had regarded him as nothing but a mild irritation. It was something that lacked the desperate craving for victory and survival he had experienced in his battle with Gaara as well. It was almost like fighting an even nastier counterpart to Yakushi Kabuto. 

Kabuto had acknowledged Naruto. Perhaps even if it was only mockingly, he had _respected_ Naruto. Enough that he hadn't been so caught off guard by a Rasengan to the chest that he couldn't counterattack. 

In a lot of ways, he figured, Kabuto was the scariest opponent he had ever faced. Not so much because of the chance of dying, but because of the chance of living. It had always been so easy to throw everything away in the face of unbeatable odds, but when confronted with an opponent who could beat him, yet could be beaten... 

It was just unsettling. 

The fact that his wounds were starting to open back up didn't help any. At the least, it was only surface bleeding, not the kind of lethal internal injuries that had almost killed him just a few minutes ago. 

"That guy's nuts," he finally said to himself, though his voice was drowned out by the still-close rattling of people fleeing and rioting in the streets. 

At least, he put a hand out and grabbed onto a drainage pipe connected to the roof of the building on his right. His free hand instinctively came down to the wound at his stomach and started to pick through his freshly-soaked jacket and shirt. He could feel the cut almost as if it were fresh, and when he finally poked at the edges of it with a fingertip, a sensation not unlike being stabbed with an electrified fork ran through his insides and left him wobbling. 

After several haphazard attempts at assessing the damage, he finally gave up on it and pulled his hand free. His fingers were slicked red with blood. 

Minus the bleeding and his would-be assassin though, this whole ordeal was starting to remind him of Konoha. After all, how many times had he stolen a Blast Note and detonated it in a public toilet, causing nothing short of riots in his wake? 

... And how many times, he wondered, did he end up hiding in a back alley like this, praying they wouldn't find him and rip him limb from limb? 

Of course, he had always wanted the acknowledgement, but not the look of sheer murder that had been in the eyes of more than a few people back then. 

Suddenly, Naruto found that he actually missed Konoha. A lot. He missed everyone -- the other members of the Konoha Six; Lee, Shikamaru, Chouji, Neji, Kiba... Hell, Akamaru too. He missed Sakura, Iruka and even that bastard, Sasuke. He even missed Kakashi... 

Kakashi would've been useful right now. Chidori would've been useful too, but he didn't have that technique. He had Rasengan. 

He had a bomb for each hand. Perhaps that fit him more anyway. 

"Gfuh," he finally sounded out. _"Startin' to get philosophical about techniques... Not good."_

It didn't take a doctor to notice the signs of injury and exhaustion on him. 

Still, he stood his ground. Uneasily, clutching the pipe for support and wishing he could see all their faces again -- Tsunade, Hinata and all the other Genin girls too, Gaara and his siblings -- he still stood. 

His eyes had gone blue again back up on the rooftop, and his teeth were normal as well. Perhaps the whiskers might've been a bit thicker than normal, but that always happened after the Nine-Tails chakra flowed through him. It would last a little while, then go away. 

Finally, he took in a deep breath. Through willpower alone, he made himself stand up straight, and repeated a mantra that Iruka had once given him during his years as a dilinquent; _"Walk your own path with your head held high."_

He had never told anyone, but that had been the real birth of his Ninja Way. Not a gravesite after some glorious battle, but in a humble classroom, standing before a man he now regarded as his father. Perhaps it hadn't been in specifics, but it had been in what mattered. It showed him that he could be himself, and that paved the way for everything else. 

"Walk your own path... With your head held high," he said to himself, forcing his posture upright and then staggering forward. 

A few paces later, he took to running.

* * *

It had been quick. She was surprised with herself for even doing it. 

Sakura had cracked about being unsurprised by what was presumably the result of Naruto's actions. Hinata had activated her Byakugan and, without so much as a word to anyone, lunged off of the overhang and into the crowd below. Almost immediately, she regretted it, but only until the voices of everyone else faded away against the background roar of the numerous people flooding around her. 

It was like swimming against a current in the middle of an avalanche. Bodies of every size and shape took over for the rocks and debris found in a landslide, but Hinata just kept moving. 

Somewhere down the line, someone struck her across the jaw. Without even thinking, she replied in kind, and a man three or four times her size went down with a loud scream. Before anyone had noticed, she had ducked and rushed forward again. After crawling between a woman's legs -- and under her dress, for that matter -- Hinata had popped back up in time to see everyone scattering from around the fellow she had taken down. 

Behind her, the Byakugan's increased range of vision alerted her to the fact that Neji had his own Byakugan active. He was about to jump into the frey himself, but stopped when Kiba slammed a hand into his chest and drove him into a wall. Sakura had been about to jump as well, but Akamaru jumped onto her face and started throwing a fit, toppling the Genin unexpectedly. 

If not for the fact that she felt like she was in the middle of a warzone, Hinata would've had to fight a laugh at the irony of Kiba and Akamaru pulling crowd control on Neji and Sakura. 

Unfortunately, she didn't have the time to, and gave it no further consideration than to thank Kiba later and buy Akamaru a new toy. 

With that, she ducked back down and rushed under a passing carriage, where she made it to a crouch. By now, the streets were just barely starting to thin a bit and-- 

Forward again. It was almost like playing a game. She went forward and if she messed up her timing, she'd be trampled. It was as simple as that. 

For some inexplicable reason though, frogs came to mind before she was at the sidewalk. By the time she popped up again, that mental image had faded away as quickly as it had come. With that, she hurtled forward again, jumping through the gap in a cart between a pile of cabbages and its roof. The owner was startled, but Hinata had no time to apologize. 

The Byakugan had him sighted, and she had questions. And answers. And inane comments that she had been rehearsing in-mind since she had first seen Naruto at the age of six, flipping off a flower-shop owner for not selling him any potting soil. 

Finally, it felt as if the long road was coming to an end. She rounded the corner into the alley and-- 

"Walk your own path... With your head held high..." 

His voice was ragged but confident, and in spite of the bloody hole in the back of his jacket, he wasn't stopping. 

He ran forward, and Hinata tried to speak. She really did. She wanted to say so many things, but... 

It felt as if every word she had wanted to throw at him had been blown away by a simple phrase. Her Byakugan deactivated, almost of its own volition, and as she watched, his exhausted stagger gave way to a run. The running carried through until he reached a wall, and although a normal person would've stopped and tried to find a way around it, Uzumaki Naruto simply jumped onto it and started running right up the side like it was flat ground. 

A few seconds later, he had reached the top of the building and passed out of sight. 

Hinata didn't know how long she stood there after that. It might have been a minute, or it could have been an hour. When she finally looked away from the course that Naruto had chosen though, she realized that her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. Her eyes were watering because she hadn't blinked, and not too far away from her, she could hear Akamaru barking as her companions finally started plowing through the crowd to get to her. 

She didn't know why it had happened like that. For all the effort she put into it, he had disarmed her without even knowing she was there. 

For all the lack of effort he had put into it, his words made her want to become stronger all over again. 

"You're going to be a wise Hokage, Naruto," she said to him. He wasn't there to hear it, and maybe he wouldn't have even believed her if he was, but she meant it. 

"I'll follow your advice. Take care." 

She meant it a lot. 

With that, Hinata turned and ran down her own path. She would meet her teammates and Neji before they even made it out of the street, and maybe she would get chewed out for her actions, but... 

That didn't matter. 

For the first time since they had left Konoha, Hyuuga Hinata actually believed in herself. 

That made all the difference in the world.

* * *

The last thing Shunseito Kazuma's father had ever told him was that he needed to take care of his little sister. It had been right before the elder Shunseito, Kizumaru, had left for a mission. A few days later, word had reached the village about a Sharingan user who wasn't an Uchiha and a technique known as Raikiri. 

He never saw his father again. 

As the years ticked by, Kazuma discovered the Sharingan user's name to be Hatake Kakashi. The technique's true name was Chidori, and when he finally saw it in action a few months ago, wielded by a Sound-nin with red eyes, he knew why: It sounded like a thousand birds flapping their wings. 

Kazuma bore no ill-will towards Kakashi, or his technique. He didn't particularly care, to be honest. Killing was just part of the work that both of them did for a living, and his father wouldn't have wanted him to be consumed by something so petty as a desire for revenge anyway. Not when he had a sister to take care of. 

His reflections on the matter drew to an end the moment his sandals hit the roof. The streets were slowly starting to fill back up now, but Chimi Tensho was not a man to be seen so easily. Like a cloud, he had drifted here, unseen by the countless prying eyes below. All it would have taken to see him was a simple glance up. Thankfully though, no-one ever seemed to notice him. 

Without a word, he bent down, located the secret panel and pulled it up out of the way. It was his private doorway into the home they shared, and though he had never advocated its construction, he didn't particularly mind it either. Once the panel was out of the way, he slipped down onto the ladder, let himself in and pulled the panel back into place, securing it with a hard tug on the handlebar built into its bottom. With that done, Kazuma simply pulled his mask off and jumped the rest of the way. 

Eight feet later, he had landed in the small room that served as his living room and bedroom. The bathroom was in the back, the booth and kitchen were in the front and his sister-- 

"Kazuma!" 

Was half-tackling him from behind. 

Kazuma let out a half-pained sigh of relief. Even if the girl had a tendency to almost floor him whenever he came home, it was a welcome routine in an unwelcoming world. 

"Ayane," he greeted, straightening up and prying her arms from around his upper body. "Are you alright?" He asked, finally turning around. 

His sister, Shunseito Ayane, was eighteen years old. Like he and their mother, she was almost unhealthily fair-skinned and had dazzling blue hair. The cloudy eyes, tinged grey by nature, were the only major feature either of them had from their father. Where Kazuma was dressed like a consumate ninja though, Ayane worked as a ramen girl, running the booth up front almost singlehandedly. She was bubbly and cheerful, but-- 

"I'm fine, but _you're_ bleeding!" 

Far too easily worried for her own good. It was no wonder their father had specifically ordered her to never become a ninja. 

"I'll be alright," Kazuma replied, favoring his sore leg as he made his way to the couch. For appearance's sake only, he allowed Ayane to help him. 

"What happened? I heard an explosion and the streets went _nuts_ and--" 

"That boy from last night," Kazuma answered simply, unstrapping the sword sheathe from his back and setting it almost reverently onto the floor against the couch. His vest came off next, and he didn't have to worry about the shuriken holster. It had been blown off in the explosion. "Uzumaki Naruto." 

"What did he do this time?" Ayane asked, only slightly distasteful at the mention of Kazuma's opponent. 

For a moment, he considered not telling her a thing. Then he remembered that she had been living around ninja all of her life. Whether he liked it or not, she knew enough about the business to form her own conclusions. 

"Broke into Ontai Asshuku's mansion. Beat up two guards -- Kurosawa Kenji and Takashi Ichimaru. Then he stole Kurosawa's sword and tried to leave," Kazuma recounted, unsure if he should be amused or disgusted by the whole thing. 

"Does he have some grudge with Kenji?" Ayane asked with a half-worried tone. Kazuma knew quite well that the blue-eyed samurai had a thing for his sister. 

Probably why he had made it a point to let Naruto beat the tar out of him to begin with. At least the kid was useful for _something_. 

"No. I think he's got one with me though," he confessed. "Apparently, since he's got to protect Jiraiya, his goal is to defeat me. He wants to become stronger, and since that probably translates into fighting me on an equal playing field--" 

"He went through _all that_ just to _get_ a sword?" Ayane asked, her jaw slacking as she pulled open a drawer on a stand across from the couch. 

"That's what I said," Kazuma replied. 

"That boy is completely insane," she concluded, and Kazuma nodded in agreement. 

A few seconds later, what was left of his pants' leg below the knee was being pulled up and Ayane was going to work on his wound. She had no formal medical training, but while he had spent his years learning to kill, she had been able to pick up on most of the tricks of the medic trade just by virtue of how many times she had visited him in the hospital. Kazuma suspected that she could have been a genius for that sort of thing, but it was really a moot point since she would never be a ninja to begin with. 

"I agree. He's also... Unusual. In other ways, I mean," he pointed out, not even wincing at the acidic burn of the chemicals she was using. 

"Such as?" 

"He survived two Raiheijin." 

Ayane stopped. 

"I thought..." 

"It was impossible. I did too. I don't know how he survived the first one, let alone the second. I hit him right through the chest and drove him through a wall," Kazuma recalled grimly. "He couldn't even move well enough to get up. He had to use Kage Bunshin." 

"Isn't that a Jounin-level technique?" Ayane asked vaguely, now returning to the matter of tending Kazuma's leg wound with a worried look on her face. 

"Yes. He used one to escape, another to distract me and then the last one transformed into a giant Blast Note. I only barely got away from it in time," he commented. 

"... You shouldn't fight that boy again. He's not normal." 

"He's in the way of my mission to assassinate Jiraiya. I won't get another opportunity like this again," Kazuma replied smoothly. He had almost rehearsed this part of the conversation in-mind back before he had finished jumping away from the explosion. 

"Then go _around him_. You don't have to fight him," Ayane pleaded, even as she started on the bandages. 

"If I get the chance, I'll avoid fighting him, alright?" He lied, and knew that there wouldn't be such an opportunity at all. 

Ayane didn't look at him for a long, long time. When she did, her eyes were starting to water, and the bandages around his leg had been tied in a perfect knot. Her technique made it smooth, unlikely to stick out in combat and alert an enemy to the injury. The rest would be up to him. 

"I don't like this, Kazuma. He doesn't sound like the type who would give up for anything." 

"He's just a boy, Ayane. I'll be fine," he replied, scruffing her hair and then standing up again. 

She didn't reply to him this time. She just knelt there on the floor, staring over at his sword and looking worried again. He hated seeing her worry, but... 

_ "Sacrifices must be made,"_ he reminded himself. 

"I'm going to go take a bath and then get some rest. I have until the end of the week for the poison to stay in effect. I doubt Jiraiya will leave until then," he said, turning away and heading for the bathroom. "Try not to worry about me too much, Ayane." 

The door to the bathroom opened, then closed. Like so many other times, Kazuma was glad the bathwater kept him from hearing his sister cry.

* * *

Climbing up a sheer cliff wall would've been considerably easier if he had been able to do it without feeling like he was going to pass out every step of the way. 

He had made it out of the city with no more trouble after clearing the wall of the building at the end of the alley. The only catch was how much chakra he had poured into running to make up for the blood loss -- something the Kyuubi had yet to fix. Just as he had on so many other occasions, Naruto was again realizing that his 'tenant' was utterly evil and untrustworthy. Its chakra was like a drug that provided a quick high when it was vital, then faded completely the moment it was no longer an absolute necessity. 

It was something of a love-hate relationship, to be blunt. 

Regardless of how much he and the Nine-Tails were coming to despise each other though, Naruto felt that he could use some of the demon fox's chakra right about now. It felt, more and more, like he was almost out of his own. 

He was two thirds of the way up the cliff. The sword he had taken from that Kenji fellow was a barely-comforting weight at his side, but more than any comfort it provided, it was just weight. It was slowing him down just as much as everything else he had on him right now. 

Somewhere along the way, he had pulled out a pair of kunai and resorted to stabbing them into the cliff wall to help himself up. 

Somewhere near the edge, he had resorted to leaving them in place and pulling out another pair, standing on the first two to try and catch his breath. When he felt their hold on the cliff wall loosen and start to slip, he had finally pulled himself further up, and not long after that... 

He made it. 

Naruto gave one last heave and rolled up onto the top of the cliff, lying haphazardly on his side and barely able to see straight. Jiraiya and Kensei's presences greeted him, but neither said a word, and it didn't look like they even noticed his arrival. 

"I'm back," He finally rasped out, trying -- and failing -- to sit up. 

"Have fun?" Jiraiya asked, totally immersed in whatever dirty thing he was sketching now. Kensei was peeking over his shoulder and muttering things about how strange human pornography was. 

When Naruto didn't answer, Jiraiya finally let out a sigh and put down the sketchpad. Then he neatly gathered the rest of his art supplies up and tucked them away into his vest before standing up and bracing an elbow against Kensei's rough, ugly hide. 

"I take it you're ready to begin training now?" He asked. 

Naruto could've strangled him on the spot. If he had been able to move, anyway.

* * *

For all the chaos in the streets, the walk back to the hotel was surprisingly calm and collected. Akamaru was chewing on a piece of what looked to be someone's shirt, Kiba had his hands in his pockets and Neji was walking with his eyes closed, scowling and with his arms crossed over his chest. Sakura differed from them in that she had her arms tucked behind her head and was staring up at the sky, and Hinata... 

Hinata had to _make herself_ stop smiling. 

There hadn't been any of the questions she had expected, and though there was a vague sense of annoyed curiosity coming from Kiba, Neji seemed to understand implicitly and didn't say a word. Sakura had given her a look with one pink brow raised straight up into her forehead, but hadn't said anything either. 

It was rather uneventful, really. 

Now though, she and Sakura had made it to the hotel room they would be sharing. Kiba was next door, as was Neji. It had been a simple arrangement: Since Kurenai was a woman and Kiba was, well... _Kiba_, Neji had been selected to take her place as token Jounin watchdog for the three Genin. Both rooms were connected by a double-door, both had two beds and while Hinata missed her _real_ bed, it would do... 

And now, here she was. 

Sitting on that same bed, watching a television as Sakura washed her make-up off in the background. 

It was so utterly mundane that it she was still getting used to it. Not only was Sakura the first real _friend_ she had who was a girl -- Kurenai didn't really count, as Hinata thought of her more like the mother she'd never had -- but Sakura had also introduced a hundred thousand different concepts to her. Kurenai had taught Hinata what it meant to be a ninja, yes, but Sakura had been the one to teach Hinata that it was okay to be a girl. 

Shino and Kiba weren't exactly the type you could talk to about having a crush on someone, or having cramps during your period. Even now, Kiba had a tendency to go missing a few days every month since Kurenai, Hinata and Sakura had _somehow_ wound up on the same cycle and... 

And Hinata made a mental note to buy Kiba something alcoholic for when he came of age. That boy must have dearly needed it. 

"What was he like?" Sakura's voice popped the nonexistent thought bubble from above her head. When Hinata looked around from the TV, the other girl was stepping out of the bathroom and pulling her protector from her head. 

"W-What do you mean?" She asked. 

"Was he _Naruto_?" Sakura didn't really clarify. She must have expected Hinata to have more familiarity with him, and while the Hyuuga girl wished that was the case, it wasn't. 

"I still don't know what y-you mean." 

"What did he look like? How did he act? Why didn't you drag him back?" Sakura explained, plopping down on the other bed and pulling off those boots of hers. The ones Kiba so fervantly enjoyed mocking. 

"I only s-saw him from the b-back," Hinata answered, fighting back her stutter every step of the way. Speaking to herself was one thing, but speaking to others was still quite difficult at times. Especially when Naruto came into the conversation. 

"Well?" 

"He... Um... Looked l-like Naruto." 

Sakura stared at her. Then rose a brow again and flopped onto her back. 

"How did he act?" 

"I... I only heard him say o-one thing. About following his own w-way. Th-then, he kind of... Ran off." 

Sakura let out an annoyed sigh and scooted up onto her bed, then rolled to face away from Hinata completely. She didn't look like she was going to bother showering, and Hinata didn't blame her at all. It had been a long day. And a long night too. 

"Typical Naruto," the pink-haired girl said, and Hinata _almost_ thought she detected a hint of wistfulness to her voice. She couldn't tell if it was sisterly or something more, and in all honesty, she didn't want to know. 

"Goodnight," Hinata offered. 

"Night," Sakura replied. 

With that, Hinata reached over and clicked off the lamp, more out of politeness than necessity. She left the television on though. White noise was still something new to her, and while Sakura and Kiba were both adept at tuning it out, she was still learning. There weren't any TVs or broadcast radios in the Hyuuga household, after all. 

A few seconds later, to the drum of an old samurai action movie, Hinata allowed herself to fall asleep.

* * *

It had all come down to this. 

Jiraiya had given him a few hours of rest. When he had been woken up(to the joyful declaration that he was a stupid little bastard), he had found that his shirt and jacket had been repaired and his wounds had finally finished healing. The old man shrugged off any questions about the clothing, and Naruto let the subject drop at that. Afterward, he had been given a few minutes more to wake up, and then... 

Then Kensei had informed him that he was tired of waiting. 

It was now or never, and as the sun began to rise in the east, Naruto found himself standing before the great bullfrog swordsman with Kenji's katana sheathed at his side and a feeling of pride swelling up in his chest. Against the odds, against a superior ninja and against his own rotten luck, he had managed to take the sword from a quality samurai, and now he was going to use it. Kensei would be the first, and after him, Naruto intended to take Chimi Tensho down a few pegs at his own game. 

More and more, he was starting to like the idea that he was going to be using a sword. It made him feel more... He couldn't quite describe it. Perhaps it wasn't even the fact that it was just a sword, but that it was a samurai sword. A _real_ samurai sword. A weapon that belonged to a high-class warrior who was seen and known by the public. Someone who didn't lurk in the shadows and someone who was loved for it. He had seen the dark side of samurai life back when he had taken down Gato's thugs. Now though, with this weapon of prestige at his side, he felt that he was starting to see the bright side... 

And he liked it. 

"**Before we begin,**" Kensei said, his booming voice drawing Naruto back to reality in an instant. "**You should know that once this fight kicks off, there's no backing out of it.**" 

"Yeah, and?" Naruto shot back, unphased. 

Kensei shot a look at Jiraiya with one eye. The man shrugged at him, but said nothing. The bullfrog let out a snort of disdain, then turned its attention back to Naruto. 

"**Since the Sage didn't explain, I will. This is a Chikarakurabe no Gama. The Trial of the Toads,**" he began, his voice so grave and serious that it threatened to make Naruto's legs shake. "**According to the Gama Jingi, this is a fight to the _death_, kid. Once it starts, it can't be stopped for anything. The moment we draw our swords, we're gonna fight and we're gonna _keep fightin'_ 'til one of us _stops livin'_.**" 

Suddenly, the sword at his side didn't feel so uplifting anymore. 

"**If you don't wanna die, back out now. You won't get another chance.**" 

And with that, Kensei silenced, staring him down with all the intent of rending him limb from bloody limb. 

But the swords weren't drawn yet. 

He could step down. He could walk away and not have to do this. He could live to fight another day, get stronger and try again. 

But... 

"No can do," he said, and meant it. "I don't run away." 

"**I'm tellin' ya, _back d-_**" 

"_I don't quit, you big bastard_! It's not my Ninja Way!" 

Without even thinking, he reached down and grabbed hilt of the sword. Instinct guided his left hand to the sheathe, giving the handguard the opening push to unlock it and allow it to be drawn. From there, Uzumaki Naruto gave a pull and the katana met air. 

"**HAVE AT IT THEN!**" Kensei bellowed, drawing out his own sword in a flash of steel and a whistle of death. 

With a scream, Naruto took the katana in both hands and charged forward. 

This was just like his battles with Zabuza, Haku, Neji, Gaara, Orochimaru and perhaps even the Kyuubi itself. He was up against an opponent he had no chance against, in unfamiliar territory and with only limited options. It was a desperate situation, but Naruto _thrived in it_. 

With pride in his heart, the young ninja lashed out... 

_ And Gama Kensei shattered his sword in one blow._

End Part Four

* * *

**Author's Note:** Told you I was gonna have fun with this one...

Hinata's dash through the street was partially inspired by a mixture of Frogger and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Especially the cabbage cart. 

Ayane's name and appearance are both close to Ayame, the girl at the Ichiraku Ramen. Yes, she was the girl who was serving everyone in the last Part. 

Jingi was mentioned by Gama Bunta wayyyy back when Naruto fought Gaara. It's the code of the Yakuza. I invented the Trial, since I've got no idea if anything like that(a duel to the death) actually exists in the Yakuza underworld.


	5. Render a Repetition

**Foreword:** Soundtrack, ahoy!

**Scene One:** Ghost in the Shell - Fish Silent Cruise  
**Scene Two/Three/Four:** Hack Sign - Key of the Twilight  
**Scene Five:** Fullmetal Alchemist - Brothers  
**Scene Six:** Samurai Champloo - Bracelet  
**Scene Seven:** Outlaw Star - Melfina's Song(English, though Hiro no Tsuki will do)

* * *

**

The Indirect Approach  


**_ Part Five: Render a Repetition  
_ Suicide Sunrise

* * *

Time slowed to a torturous crawl. 

Naruto could do nothing but watch as it happened. The colossal kitchen knife-shaped blade of Gama Kensei slammed into his own samurai sword, and almost on impact, Naruto's weapon shattered, taking his spirit right along with it. Mere moments ago, he had been the king of the hill. He had clawed his way through a city, battled an enemy who wielded lightning as if it were his personal play thing and struggled back in spite of being handicapped by injuries that were as mental as they were physical. He had survived fear and terror, but through it all, his spirit had always remained strong. 

Now, it was in as many pieces as the sword he was holding. 

In a way, the shards of metal were beautiful. They danced through the air in a cascade of blue, silver, orange and red, and somewhere in the midst of seeing them, Naruto became aware of a jarring sensation rushing through his entire arm. 

His footing gave way. The hilt left his grasp and flew through the air to his right. Shards of metal rained down across his chest and shoulders, unable to do more than scrape across the threads of his jacket. Behind them, Kensei was still poised in mid-swing, both hands grasping the hilt of his sword as its tip came to point right at him. The great toad's black eyes, with their yellow-rimmed pupils, were narrowed at him. Its expression was one of unbearable contempt and disappointment. 

In the past three years, Naruto had never truly feared death. He had feared defeat, yes. He had feared the deaths and losses of others, but rarely outside of his own private thoughts. 

Now, before him, Gama Kensei had become the embodiment of death. A giant bullfrog Shinigami with a Yakuza's glint in his eyes. 

In the split second that Naruto had to register -- _truly register_ -- the loss of his sword and the futility of the effort that went into it, Gama Kensei taught him what it really means to fear death. 

It was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced in his life. 

"**IT AIN'T OVER YET!**" 

Time snapped back to normal. It was all he could do to sidestep the thrust of Gama Kensei's sword. Even one fraction of a second slower and it would've probably torn his upper body in half. 

"This isn't fair!" He finally shouted out, only to take a backhand across the chin for his worries. 

Gama _allowed him_ to land on his back, rolling up to his feet almost reflexively. When he looked at the toad again, the expression on its face was even more disgusted than it had been before. 

"**It doesn't _matter_ if it's unfair or not, shitsqueek. _You drew, you die_. That's how this goes! IT'S OVER WHEN ONE OF US IS DEAD!**" 

For the first time, it was starting to set in that Kensei had really _meant_ what he said. It wasn't an attempt as psyching him out. He was _serious_. 

When Kensei attacked again, Naruto was once more forced to dodge the blade or be cleaved in two. As the sword swept in, he ducked to the side and performed the fastest Kage Bunshin of his life. A Kawarimi later, the doppleganger ceased to exist and Naruto was airborn, flipping over the huge bullfrog as it finished kicking his mirror image. Kensei was onto him though, and without missing a beat, the frog looked up. His webbed fingers then went into an intricate looking dance around the hilt of his sword, pulling into a familiar seal and-- 

"**SUITAIHOU!**" 

The toad swordsman's mouth flew open and a great ball of chakra-charged water flew out. It was all Naruto could do to summon another Kage Bunshin and have it yank him out of the way in time to avoid being smashed to a pulp by the attack. On instinct, he grabbed the clone's neck and-- 

"HENGE!" 

A giant six-point shuriken went flying at Kensei. Naruto spun away and landed hard on both feet to the toad's right, turning around and pulling his hands up to his mouth in the familiar Tiger Seal. The toad blocked the shuriken with his sword, and in that instant, he was unprotected... 

Naruto fried him. Chakra clustered into his lungs and an instant later, blew out in his breath, igniting on contact with his fingertips. The resulting stream of fire hurtled at Kensei so quickly that not even a legendary swordsman would've been able to dodge it. 

The only problem with Naruto's lack of a plan was that Kensei _didn't_ dodge it. Instead, he used his sword to leverage the Henged Kage Bunshin into the way and lashed out, not with a weapon, but with his tongue. 

Like a slimy whip, it plowed through the fire and slammed into Naruto's face, dead-center on his nose. The blow left him seeing red, and ended his attempt at burning the toad on the spot. He staggered back, and Gama withdrew his tongue back into his mouth, leaning forward and then leaping with such speed that the ground literally _exploded_ behind him. Again, Naruto dodged the blade by inches, ducking under both it and its owner as the two passed overhead. 

When he stood again, Gama Kensei had landed and shot back up into the air. He looked up and the huge bullfrog was backflipping overhead, almost fifty feet above him. 

"**YOU CAN'T RUN FOREVER!**" 

"What happened to your Ninja Way?" Jiraiya piped up snidely in the background. Naruto spared him only a glance, and the look on the man's face made him want to commit murder. He had a cocky smirk, and his arms were crossed as he leaned back against a rock. 

"I'M GONNA GET YOU FOR THIS!" Naruto screamed at him, finding it so much easier to focus on the man rather than the monster bearing down on him. 

"**YOUR OPPONENT IS ME, SHITSQUEEK!**" Kensei bellowed from overhead. 

When Naruto finally looked back up at him, the bullfrog had somehow stopped in mid-air, sword held up and laid flat across his left shoulder as he started to descend... 

A second later, the ground where Naruto had been standing was completely ripped out by the pass of Kensei's weapon. The toad landed with a loud thump in front of the trench he had just carved out, and Naruto had again been driven to leap back. 

"**Is _this_ the full extent of your Ninja Way?**" Kensei demanded. "**It's _nothing_!**" 

"Shut up!" Naruto bit back. 

"**It's just the boastful stupidity of a child! _Nothing_ but _bullshit_!**" 

"_Shut up_!" 

"Then _make me_! Prove this Ninja Way crap and show me how wrong I am!" Kensei challenged, pointing his sword's tip right at Naruto's face. 

"_Fine_," Naruto replied, not even knowing what he could do at this point. 

And then it occurred to him: He still had the sheathe. 

Without thinking, he drew it from his belt and flipped it up like a sword. Both hands gripped tightly around it, and with that, he charged forward again. 

This time, Kensei lashed out first. Naruto again dodged, jumping up onto the blade, leaping off of it and slamming the sheathe down between Gama's eyes with everything he could bring to bear. 

The sheathe broke on impact. 

Naruto flipped several times and landed with a skidding crouch behind Kensei, jolting upright and turning around only to recieve a backwards spin kick to the chest. In the same way it had the first time, Kensei's kick seemed to temporarily implode his entire body around the point of impact, leaving it to violently ripple back to normal as he was thrown back. Forty feet later, he hit the side of a dead tree and bowled it over, snapping the thing in two. 

When it was all said and done, he didn't even bother tallying up his injuries. He simply sat upright and looked at his opponent. 

For all the effort behind the blow, the sheathe had done nothing. Kensei didn't even have a bruise. 

"**Was _that_ it?**" He asked disappointedly. 

Naruto forced himself up and shook his head. It hurt just to breathe, but he had experienced worse. 

"I'm just gettin' started," he replied, _forcing_ his voice to remain steady and strong. The last thing he needed to do right now was show weakness to an enemy. 

"**No. You're _through_,**" Gama replied. 

An instant later, the toad was hurtling at him all over again. 

Without thinking, Naruto whipped out a handful of shuriken and threw them forward. Then, his hands flew together and performed a remote Kage Bunshin -- not on himself, but on the pack of weapons he had just thrown. 

The ensuing shower of three inch razor blades was just enough to make Gama pull his sword in front of his face to protect it. The rest hit without incident, though they did little more than to cause a mess of small scratches that didn't even result in bleeding. In spite of the minimal damage though, it gave him an opening, and he took it. 

Naruto lunged in, performing another Kage Bunshin and creating six seperate copies of himself. At once, all seven Narutos slid under Gama Kensei and kicked up into his stomach, sending the huge frog flying up into the air. One after the other, the bunch stood up and started jumping and transforming. First three jumped at three others, turning into giant shuriken of varying sizes. Then the three remaining hurled them at Kensei. 

Then the three Kage Bunshin still remaining jumped at Naruto and started transforming as well. Two became giant shuriken, another became a giant kunai. He caught the shuriken in one hand each and the kunai with a foot through its hoop. With one hard jump and a spin, he hurled all three at Kensei in rapid succession. 

Against the assault, Gama faired upsettingly well. With three lightning-fast cuts, he struck down the first wave. The fourth shuriken was caught in hand, and the fifth was smashed away. The kunai, for all its size and potency, was grabbed by its ring with Kensei's tongue. 

Both of the surviving dopplegangers returned to normal. Kensei wasted no time in dispatching them, literally squeezing the head off of the one in his hand and eating the second before belching out a cloud of smoke as he landed. 

_ "What's it gonna take to beat this guy?"_ Naruto thought, staring at the frog as it took a moment to look itself over. _"Nothing I've done has even hurt him..."_

And then it occurred to him: Almost all of his attacks had been blocked or somehow hindered by the sword. 

_ Two-step kill_.

The phrase ran through his mind like a stampeding elephant, and Naruto finally knew what he had to do. 

"**I'm tired of wasting my time on you, kid,**" Gama stated. At once, the huge toad heaved up onto its back legs and aimed its sword tip at him. "**I'm gonna end this now.**" 

"Me too," Naruto announced, smiling viciously as he put his hands in front of himself and started gathering chakra between them. 

Before long, the air around him was a whipping frenzy, tinged with yellow and blue. The Rasengan coalesced like a dream in his grasp. It lacked form and substance, but it glew brighter than a small star in his hands, consisting of energy that whipped into a sphere that whirled and writhed with all the intensity of a miniature tornado. 

Gama Kensei's eyes narrowed. For an instant, Naruto thought he saw something like recognition flashing through them. 

Then Kensei hurtled forward again, the ground exploding behind him. 

Naruto charged forward, screaming what could very well be his last battle cry. 

It took five seconds. 

One to close the distance... 

One for the two to attack... 

One for them to pass each other by... 

One for them both to land... 

And one more for them to register what had happened. 

As the two had made it to point blank, Kensei had lashed out first. Naruto ducked and spun around, shoving the Rasengan into the flattened side of the sword's blade. Then he had somehow twisted between Kensei's elbow and knee, passing the toad by and landing on one hand before flipping himself upright onto both feet and skidding to a halt. 

He was still alive. 

Kensei was still alive. 

The sword, however, was reduced to a rain of sparkling shrapnel, blowing through the wind and the morning sunlight as a million small sparks of solid light. A few seconds after the clash, a strung gust caught the debris and blew it back between Naruto and Kensei, whose back was still turned and whose hands were still wrapped tightly around the hilt of his sword -- literally all that was left of the once magnificent weapon. 

Kensei let out a sigh and threw away what was left of his sword. Then he turned around and wordlessly drew his hands into the seal for the Suitaihou-- 

But Naruto was ready. 

Kage Bunshin came first, and then another of him was standing by. Together, they rushed forward, side by side. Gama Kensei completed the seal and lurched forward. The cannonball of water -- large enough to consume a small building -- hurtled from the great toad's mouth like a speeding train. 

But Naruto was ready. 

Together, he and the doppleganger jumped around the huge ball of water, leaving it to blow right by and continue on into nothing. As one, they landed, and each one jumped at Kensei for all they were worth. 

The frog didn't move. 

The Kage Bunshin made it to within an arm's reach of Naruto and transformed into a familiar, albeit colossal, piece of paper with red and black markings on it. 

At last, Naruto lunged to the side and slammed the giant Blast Note down...

* * *

The explosion that woke him was so loud that it had probably rattled the entire city to some extent. Before the noise had even finished blasting through his ears, Shunseito Kazuma had hurled himself out of the top bunk and landed on both feet. Before Ayane could sit up from where she lay in the bottom bunk, he had crossed the room, grabbed his sword and threw it onto his back. Like many rational ninja, he had gone to sleep in his 'work clothes,' right down to the vest, so that when he reached the ladder, it was simply a matter of pulling his mask up. 

Ayane shouted something. He wasn't paying enough attention to her to make it out, but that was alright. He would just ask her later. 

One hand shot up when he was nearly half-way up the ladder, shoving the hatch aside and leaping up onto the roof. The sight that greeted him was as familiar as it was upsetting. 

Over the roofs of a dozen or more buildings, he could see a black cloud of smoke, mushrooming up into the sky. A fine cloud of dust and dirt ringed around it as it ascended, and though he couldn't quite see the cliff due to the number of buildings in the way, Kazuma had the distinct impression that a rather sizeable portion of it had been reduced to a smoldering crater. 

_ "That Naruto boy must've had something to do with it,"_ he thought. 

He could hear Ayane scrambling towards the ladder to try and get up to the roof. She must have wanted to stop him... 

But he still had a job to do. And with that in mind, he kicked the panel back into place and sealed her off from his world. A moment later, he pulled the mask up over his face and fastened it with the forehead protector, sealing himself off from everything else in the process. 

Not long after that, Chimi Tensho hurtled towards the crater with murder in his eyes.

* * *

"**... Shit...**" 

Somewhere in the background, Jiraiya was laughing. Naruto slowly scraped himself up out of the dirt and dusted himself off, looking at where the bloody mess that called itself Gama Kensei was currently situated. The once imposing bullfrog was now spread out across its back, a full eighty feet away. His kimono had been blown off, and the entirety of his body was covered in blood and burns. 

"He's a firecracker, ain't he?" Jiraiya asked, somewhere between stomping around and holding his sides in laughter. The man looked like he was about to fall over. 

"**At least the last one had the decency to cut me,**" Kensei replied, trying -- and failing, miserably -- to sit up. 

A few seconds later, Kensei finally rolled over onto his belly and stood up in the usual froggish manner, heavily favoring his left arm. As Naruto dusted himself off and started walking forward, the toad heaved up onto unstead hind legs. 

"**It isn't over, shitsqueek,**" he stated, left arm hanging limp while the right one drew up in a pose similar to a boxer. 

"Yeah," Naruto countered. "It is." 

"**Eh?**" 

"You're already beaten," he pointed out, his walk turning into an unsteady run. 

"**It's over when one of us is _dead_, damnit!**" Kensei shouted back, his fist rattling. 

Naruto replied by forming a small Rasengan into his right hand. The air literally cleared itself around him, forming a visible path through the thin layer of smoke left over from his Blast Note. 

Kensei smiled. 

"**Then you do understand,**" he said. 

Naruto still didn't reply. Instead, he jumped. 

A few seconds later, his left hand smashed into the great toad's chin and bowled him over. Naruto landed on Kensei's chest and neck, arm held back and Rasengan spiraling. Then... 

Another explosion went off. 

When it was over, his arm rested directly between Kensei's eyes, laid flat across the toad's head. A crater, small and smokeless, was positioned beneath his still open hand. 

"You lose," Naruto told him, then stood up and jumped off. 

"**... _Damn it_,**" Kensei spat. As Naruto took a few steps away, the huge bullfrog started to flail and, for all intents and purposes, throw a temper tantrum. "**This little shitsqueek is just as bad as the last one!**" 

"Isn't it great?" Jiraiya cut in, suddenly standing behind him and slapping a hand into his hair. Almost instantly, as Naruto began pondering ways to rip Jiraiya's intestines out and strangle him with them, the man started scruffing his hair. It was _almost_ affectionate, like what he had always figured a grandfather or a well-liked uncle might do. 

"**... Well. Won't be the first time I've had to live with losin' a Trial,**" Kensei replied, calming down enough to roll onto his side and give Naruto a once-over. 

"**You might not look like much, but you're gonna make a good Hokage someday.**" 

And with that, he exploded into a puff of pinkish smoke and was gone. Naruto finally pried Jiraiya's hand out of his hair and turned around with a glare. 

"What was _that_ about?" 

"Oh, nothing," Jiraiya replied with a smirk on his face. "It's just that the only other person to ever beat Kensei in a Trial was the Fourth Hokage. _He_ used a sword," he pointed out. 

The surge of emotions Naruto felt from that was one that couldn't quite be described. At once, he wanted to start cheering, question Jiraiya as to how the Yondaime had won, _savagely beat him with a large blunt object_ for making him go through all of that, lie down and take a nap, go get some ramen _and_ move on to those promised lessons he was to be given upon beating Kensei... 

But, as with so many other decisions in the life of a ninja, the choice was made for him by someone else.

* * *

"I had a feeling one of you was behind this." 

His landing had been silent. They had noticed him anyway though, and when they did, he didn't bother trying to be stealthy anymore. 

"Damn right," the Sage replied, grabbing Uzumaki by the shoulders and steering him between the two. 

For a long moment, Kazuma and the boy stared at each other. The kid wasn't as scruffy looking as he had been during their first encounter, now that he could get a good look. At night, when they had last fought, it had all been so hectic that he couldn't even get a good view of him. Now though... 

Now, Kazuma saw someone who wasn't a child, but a ninja. A shinobi who, in another lifetime perhaps, would have been a suitable Cloud-nin. Perhaps even someone he might have tolerated to make advances on Ayane. The only thing that made him look like anything _but_ a ninja was the fact that he wasn't wearing his forehead protector. Its gleaming metal was missing, and when Kazuma took note of the boy's bare forehead, he found it to be an oddly irritating sight. 

"Your forehead protector," he stated simply. 

Before Naruto could reply -- and he looked like he wanted to -- Kazuma's true target cut in. 

"Did you come to finish the job?" The man asked, and Kazuma felt himself nod on reflex alone. 

"Yes," he answered belatedly. "I did. I simply have to move your student out of the way and--" 

"And nothin'," Jiraiya cut him off, smiling. "My chakra's already starting to return. Right now, I could probably summon a frog big enough to level this entire countryside and be gone before anyone can stop me." 

Kazuma knit his brows in a frown. Even Jiraiya's student seemed partially taken aback. 

"And what of your Leaf comrades?" 

"They aren't my comrades right now. They're just people who happen to be in the crossfire," Jiraiya answered, only to continue. "And if you'll notice, none of 'em showed up to check out the blast." 

That was true... Had Jiraiya and his student gone Missing-nin? 

"_But_," the Sage said, again chopping off Kazuma's thoughts at the knee. "There's a way around this." 

Kazuma's frown turned into an outright grimace. Without thinking, he reached up to grab his sword, only to spot Naruto drawing out a dozen or more shuriken in the same moment. Both of them froze in an instant. 

"And that would be?" 

"My student here really wants your head, and as I'm such a _nice_ guy, I may as well give him the chance to take it," Jiraiya answered, smiling. 

"And what does that have to do with anything?" Kazuma asked. 

"It means a duel. Today at sunset. Right here. One on one. If you beat Naruto, I'll allow you to kill me in any way you like," the Sage said. the challenge in his voice and the confidence in his eyes were both readily apparent, though his student was less than thrilled at the option. 

Naruto had been about to speak up, but the man clamped a hand over his mouth and held him in place with the other on his shoulder. 

"Is it a deal?" 

"And what guarantee do I have that you'll keep your word and not interfere?" Tensho bit back. 

"You don't," Jiraiya answered, finally releasing Naruto and shoving him forward. 

"You've got his." 

"_I'll kill you if you even think of doing that again_!" Naruto spat back at the very man he was supposed to be protecting. While not exactly a ringing endorsement of the boy's 'Ninja Way,' the ease with which he spoke of killing Jiraiya for something so petty was enough proof to verify what the man had said. 

"It's a deal then. Today at sunset, on this cliff. I will kill both of you," Kazuma said, and meant it. 

Jiraiya just smiled at him.

* * *

Not long after the Cloud-nin had departed, Naruto and Jiraiya had left the site of the explosion too. Discretely, with the hermit in the lead, the two made their way back down the cliff and into the city. Not once were they spotted by other ninja -- there weren't even any others out on the streets, from what little Naruto had time to check out. None of the people currently wandering around seemed to carry the aura of a shinobi. Their shoulders weren't set, their eyes weren't hard and their voices and manners lacked the underlying edge he had come to associate with ninjas. 

Underneath the underneath, it seemed that there was nothing. But Naruto knew better, and when they finally stopped at a hotel where the owner -- a still-pretty woman in her 40's with a daughter who Naruto was _convinced_ was making eyes at him -- seemed to know Jiraiya. She greeted him with a slap across the face, both of them broke out into laughter and eventually hugged. Then Jiraiya had introduced Naruto, pleasantries and the like were exchanged and the woman's daughter had finally lead them to a vacant room. 

There was one bed, a cabinet and a bathroom, plus a single window. Nothing else. In spite of familiarity, it seemed that the hotel's owner wasn't going to be giving Jiraiya the best for free just because they happened to be friends. 

Jiraiya didn't seem to mind though. He ushered Naruto in, took the scroll from his back and slapped it down across the foot of the bad. It was so heavy that the entire thing rattled for a few seconds. 

"Why weren't there any Leaf ninja out there? I'd've thought they'd at least come to check and see what was up with the explosion," Naruto asked. It was the first question on his mind, and the one that weighed the heaviest because of how much he missed everyone, but it wasn't the last. 

"I didn't pick Tsunade to be a better candidate for Hokage than me because her boobs're big," Jiraiya answered. 

"But it was part of the reason," Naruto pointed out. 

Jiraiya didn't argue. 

"She's a smart woman. Maybe not quite the jutsu fiend Orochimaru is, maybe not quite as... Special as me, but still highly intelligent. Chances are, she's already figured out this whole mess perfectly and decided to avoid involving herself and Konoha in our troubles when we're all this close to the territory of a foriegn power. Wouldn't look good this close to a Chuunin Exam," the man pointed out, even as he was undoing the cord that held the scroll shut. 

"Why can't I see them?" 

"Because you're a marked man. Akatsuki may start moving at any time, and even if they don't, you're still marked because of your involvement in everything that's happened lately. It'd tarnish Konoha's reputation this close to the Exams," Jiraiya answered. There was something that bordered on apology in his tone, but he left any actual statement unsaid. 

"Well... Why are we here?" He asked. 

In response, Jiraiya opened the scroll. Almost as if it had a will of its own, it unrolled right up to the pillow on the bed, laying perfectly flat. 

"Take out that scroll I bought you yesterday. It's about time I taught you some Sealing techniques," the man commented, reaching into his vest and drawing out a paintbrush like nothing he had ever seen before. "I don't know if any of it'll actually do you any good against Chimi Tensho, but it's far less taxing to learn than anything else I could teach you right now." 

"What good'll it do if I don't use it?" 

"The only reason I said that is because you're a think-on-your-feet type. Strategy ain't your strong point," Jiraiya replied without even looking at him. Instead, he drew the brush across his palm, then pulled it away to reveal that the whole thing was now dripping with blood without Jiraiya having ever been wounded in the first place. 

"Then why should I learn it at--" 

"The Fourth learned Fuuinjutsu and it saved Konoha. He didn't really like it anymore than you probably will, but he was damn good at it and you're alive right now because of it," Jiraiya bluntly cut him off, finally looking up and seeming to stare right through him. "As is everyone else you know and care about." 

Naruto stared. 

"Part of becoming a Hokage is doing things you may not necessarily want to. Even if it's of no immediate benefit to you, there are people counting on you to know these things. If you really want to protect and nurture them all, you'll have to be able to do it," the Toad Hermit stated, and not for the first time, his words were as galvanizing as the look in his eyes was piercing. 

Without replying at all, Naruto pulled the scroll from his jacket and stepped forward. 

When he looked up at Jiraiya after unfolding it, he _almost_ thought he saw the faintest ghost of a smile on the man's face. 

"Let's begin then..."

* * *

When Kazuma had made it back to the home he shared with his sister, he was greeted in the usual fashion: She hugged him, flailed at him, screamed at him for not being more careful and finally broke down, revealing that she was worried sick the entire time he was gone. 

It was a kind of ritual. On occasion, he found it tiring beyond words. More than once, he had fought the urge to scream at her for being so emotional about what he took to be nothing, but ultimately... 

Ultimately, it was something that kept Kazuma _sane_. Because of that, he didn't quite mind it so much. 

After she had finished bawling her eyes out, Kazuma had helped her clean her face up and then sent her to the front to open shop for the day. She had smiled to him and somehow, in spite of the fact that she had only just been sobbing and conjuring up enough worst case scenarios to drive some people to suicide, she perked right up and bounced off like nothing had happened at all. 

Kazuma often wondered if her mental health was okay. He had briefly considered studying psychology under an interrogator to figure her out, but though the offer was still open, he had decided against it. Interrogators were too cruel, too jaded and too casual about breaking spirits even for his tastes. Kazuma took a small bit of enjoyment in killing an adversary, but it was the enjoyment that came with knowing he was the one still breathing at the end of the battle. Interrogators seemed to either draw no enjoyment from anything or too much enjoyment from breaking people's minds and leaving them to live with the damage. 

After Ayane had gone to the front though, Kazuma had stayed behind. Like on any other day when he wasn't on the job, handling local business for the village or otherwise busy, he picked up a book and started reading it. 

As of late, he had actually become a fan of the Icha Icha books. Not for the pornography, but the humor and the style of the artwork. Laughter was another thing to help keep him sane, and if nothing else, Kazuma had always fancied himself to be an art buff. 

Perhaps one day, if he lived long enough, he would retire from the business and work on his own art career. Ayane had kept all of the sketches he had drawn back to when he was three years old. There was even a stash of them he knew she kept under her mattress out of some outdated superstitious belief that if she kept a hold on the part of him that was still, perhaps, pure and innocent, he would be anchored to her and not die on a mission somewhere, face down in the mud. 

Kazuma stopped believing in things like that when he saw his first corpse. It was a nice sentiment though, and he appreciated it. 

"Kazuma!" 

His hand clenched and the book immediately slammed shut. A moment later, the door to the booth pushed open and Ayane's smiling face greeted him. 

"You'll never believe who showed up!" She said in a bubbly tone. 

"Kenji," Kazuma replied, his voice iced over as he tucked the book into a crack between the couch cushions. 

Almost on cue, the orange-haired samurai popped up behind Ayane, grinning idiotically and holding up a hand behind her head with two fingers extended out like bunny ears. She took notice, turned around and playfully swatted at him. It was really cute... 

It made his stomach churn. 

"Nice to see you're out of the hospital," Kazuma stated, though it was a lie passing straight through his teeth and the mask he had never taken off. At times, it was more comfortable wearing the mask than not. At least when he had it on, he didn't have to put so much effort into faking a smile. 

"Well, I wasn't really hurt _that_ bad... You shoulda seen Ichi though. His whole _head_ was in a cast," Kenji pointed out, causing Ayane to actually -- quite sincerely -- gasp. 

"... Pity," Kazuma replied. "You were hurt badly enough to lose your sword." 

It was a subtle jab. He knew the importance of the sword in samurai culture. It was probably akin to feeling as if one's soul had been ripped away. 

"... Yeah," Kenji answered him, suddenly sounding as if he felt dumb. Which was good, because in Kazuma's opinion, he _was_ dumb. 

"It's not _his_ fault, Kazuma," Ayane piped up defensively. "That kid wasn't normal. You said so yourself." 

At that, he really _did_ smile, and was quite glad that no-one could actually see it. 

"Right as always, Ayane," he admitted, just before standing up and motioning for Kenji to come in. "Could you go back to work for a while longer? I have some things I'd like to discuss with Kenji in private," he asked. 

"... It's supposed to be the late afternoon rush hour and he was the only one to visit since noon," she replied with a tone as bland as watching paint dry. 

About the only thing Kazuma really noticed was how much time had passed. When he got into a book, he may as well have buried his nose in it. 

"It's okay," Kenji replied, stepping inside and patting Ayane on the shoulder with such affection that it made Kazuma want to rip his face off. "I'll be fine." 

Kazuma took note of the fact that Kurosawa still had a wakizashi on him. 

"Okay... But you owe me. I'm bored out of my mind out there," she grumbled, finally reaching up on her tip-toes and kissing the samurai on his cheek. 

While Kenji looked ready to melt, Ayane stepped out of the room and shut the door. 

Beneath the mask, Kazuma smiled.

* * *

When the session had finally come to an end, Naruto's hand had wreaked of blood and paper. His palm and fingers were all dripping, but his mind had indeed been put at ease. 

Perhaps Jiraiya hadn't been too far off the mark when he had told, during training, that Sealing techniques were eerily relaxing. It wasn't that he had achieved any sort of resolution at all, but something about the things he had learned had calmed him down considerably. 

When it was done, and when the transfer of things had been completed from Jiraiya's scroll to Naruto's, the man had given him a proud slap on the back and helped bandage his hand. He hadn't given any congratulations, but for some reason, when he had told Naruto to go out and get something to eat, it had almost been the same as if Jiraiya had called him God's own choice for Hokage. 

Upon stepping out into the streets, Naruto had found them unusually empty all over again. There wasn't any hustle and bustle like before. Samurai were on patrol, shops were closed and even the red light district -- from what he could actually see of it -- seemed to have been shut down. 

He recognized no-one, yet everyone looked upon him with a kind of fear and loathing. The difference between it and the things he had dealt with back home was that this was an indiscriminate kneejerk kind of response to all that had happened. They weren't bitter at him because they knew something. They were bitter at _everything_, even each other. 

Hands in his pockets, Naruto walked alone, favoring the sidewalks with their easy access to back alleys and other visual obstructions. He couldn't see any ninja at all. Not even shinobi from places other than Konoha. 

_ "I guess this is what it's like when a ninja has to terrorize people,"_ he thought, mentally flashing back to his time in the Wave Country. Before the bridge was built, everyone had been like beggars. Hopeless, easily frightened beggars with so precious little to lose that Gato had them utterly cowed into submission. 

Naruto was going to be glad to get out of here. Being the hero was one thing, but being the villian... 

"You look hungry!" 

The words jolted him out of his brooding just as easily as if someone had slapped him. With a start, he turned to the side and found himself staring at something that stood out like a beautiful beacon of hope, joy, love and endearment in this suddenly desolate place... 

A ramen stand. 

"... Are you an angel?" He asked without even thinking. Before the girl at the stand could even giggle at him, he was sitting on one of the stools, hunched over and skimming through the menu before- 

"Pork ramen." 

It was so automatic that it might as well have been pure muscle memory on the part of his mouth and throat muscles. Even as she was giggling and snickering at him though, the girl behind the bar went to work. 

Within a minute, she had slapped down a bowl in front of him, bowed her head and then took to watching him eat. When he had half-finished the entire bowl in under a minute, Naruto paused and wiped his mouth -- manners he had learned purely by virtue of the time he'd spent with Jiraiya. 

"This is some of the best ramen I've ever eaten." 

"They say hunger is the best spice of all," the girl replied with a smile. "You looked like you hadn't eaten in days." 

... Which wasn't too far off the mark. Naruto honestly couldn't remember the last time he had eaten. 

"With all that's been going on, I just didn't have the time," he pointed out. It was a mark of how long he had spent training with Jiraiya that he could tell the truth and yet give away nothing, doing it all without so much as a second -- or even a first -- thought. 

"Tell me about it... You're actually one of the only customers I've had at all today," she said, grimly surveying the street behind him. One of her hands came to rest on the counter, the other bracing against her hip. 

"Really?" He asked, suddenly becoming very aware of the fact that his waitress was extremely pale... 

"Yeah. My last customer came in at around... Noon, I think?" 

... And blue-haired... 

"Though..." 

... With cloudy grey eyes. 

"Kenji _did_ come in a little while ago. Kazuma and he are talking about something or other, I don't know what." 

Naruto felt his stomach drop through the seat, hit the ground and keep going. It was a mark of his resillience that he didn't actually show it. At least, that was what he thought. 

"Is something wrong?" 

She saw right through him. 

"Oh? Oh, it's nothing. I just remembered I don't exactly have much money, that's all," he answered, fighting the nervous urge to run away now. 

The girl just smiled at him again. 

"Then it's free." 

"Free?" 

"Yeah. It's nice just to have someone here, you know?" She asked, glancing longingly over her shoulder at the door. 

In spite of the charity -- or perhaps because of it -- Naruto's appetite had vanished as soon as it had come. Still, he ate. If only to keep up appearances. For the rest of his meal though, the two didn't really speak much to each other. She watched him contently, he tried to look at anything _but_ her, and when he was finally done, he stood without the usual pomp he had once reserved for the people at the Ichiraku. 

Even so, he bowed appreciatively. 

"Thank you--" 

"Ayane." 

He winced. She couldn't see it, but he winced. 

"Thanks then, Ayane. It was some of the best food I've had in ages," he said, and meant it. 

With that, he turned and walked back out into the street. 

The sun was starting to set, and behind him, the girl named Ayane suddenly realized that she had never gotten his name. 

Perhaps that was for the best... 

_ End Part Five

* * *

_

**Author's Note:** And the countdown to the endgame begins... 

While I didn't get to point it out: Yondaime wasn't actually the first to beat Kensei, technically. Jiraiya bested him in a drinking contest, which is how the two became such friends in the first place. Yondaime simply beat him in a battle, using a sword to put the largest of Kensei's scars on his stomach/chest. Unlike Naruto, Yondaime had the brains to _avoid_ driving his sword into Kensei's. 

And I've always assumed Jiraiya used a penname for writing the Icha Icha books. It seems like only a few people(Kakashi, Naruto, etc) actually know he writes them. Kazuma isn't one of those people, so he doesn't actually know he's trying to kill the author.

And I hope I showed some of the reality of shinobi warfare with that ending scene. You never know if the guy you give a free meal to is actually the guy your brother is trying to murder in cold blood. 


	6. Starfall Serenade

**Foreword:** You know the drill by now.

**Scene One:** Rurouni Kenshin - Fallen Grey Angel  
**Scene Two:** Wolf's Rain - Heaven's Not Enough  
**Scene Three:** Hack Sign - The World  
**Scene Four:** Inuyasha - Flying in the Sky, Sango  
**Scene Five: **  
Berserk - Forces(God Hand Remix)  
Gundam Seed - Flickering Truth

* * *

** The Indirect Approach**  
_ Part Six: Starfall Serenade_  
Maelstrom's Elegy

* * *

"Something wrong?" 

A simple question from an infinitely complex man. 

"No. Nothing's wrong." 

He made it a point to tuck his hands into his pockets and look down at the city. As if he could will destiny to change with just a look. 

"Do you still think you can get through life in this business without killing people?" 

He grimaced. 

"Don't. Just don't bother with that kind of thinking. That's an order." 

"Yes sir." 

Apparently satisfied for the moment, the Toad Hermit looked forward again. When he did, Naruto fought a surge of what felt like bile in the back of his throat. The fact that they were ascending a small path up the side of the cliff had nothing to do with it. 

The trip back to the hotel had been short, and when he arrived, Jiraiya was waiting for him. From there, they had made their way out of the city, taking seperate paths and then converging again at its limits. Naruto had arrived first, and the wait had taken him a few minutes before Jiraiya showed up, wreaking of bad perfume, a bit of booze and with a few lipstick marks on his face. When Naruto had asked, the man had brushed the question off with a wave of his hand. After that, the two made their way up to the path at the base of the cliff and started walking. 

It had been a path Jiraiya denied Naruto until now, and now that he was allowed to walk it, he knew why: The view was a dangerous distraction. It was hard to pry his eyes off it. 

Even empty, it was still an alluring sight. A sprawling hive of spires and pagodas, old and new, ramshackle and pristine. Beyond the port at its edge, he could see the ocean, sparkling blue, red and orange, and utterly teaming with life, especially now that the sun was starting to set. Further still, he could see the stars coming out as if to make way for the moon. Beyond it, he knew the path back to Konoha waited... 

As much as he had acknowledged that the place was breathtaking, he was quickly coming to loathe it. Hate it, in fact, if only because his love affair with the city had been so short and turned so sour. 

"Nervous?" An unusually calm voice asked from ahead of him. A few seconds later, Naruto took note of Jiraiya's sudden lag in speed, until they were walking side by side. 

"Not really," he lied. It was a moot point admitting it this close to a battle. 

The Toad Hermit -- his mentor and almost his grandfather and uncle at once -- was someone who kept more secrets than Naruto could ever hope to keep track of. Perhaps not for lack of honesty, but for his abundance of it. It was something the two were starting to have in common. 

"You're tense," he noted upon glancing at the man. 

"I'd be insane if I wasn't," Jiraiya replied. His eyes were seemingly nailed to the path before them, but Naruto knew his focus was on him anyway. 

Of the Sannin, in spite of their time together as master and student, Jiraiya was still the one that Naruto knew the least about. He was also the only familiar face that Naruto had been able to keep after leaving Konoha, though he had known it would be that way from the start. He was everything a ninja was supposed to be, and yet he was anything but at the same time. He dressed outlandishly and mostly wrote porn for a living. He looked _nothing_ like any ninja Naruto had ever really dealt with. 

How ironic it was, then, that he was the most competent teacher Naruto had ever had. 

"I'm tense because my life is in your hands," he finally said. It was almost a measure of trust in Naruto that he had even admitted it. 

"I'll do my best," he said, unable, or perhaps simply unwilling, to psych himself up after his encounter with Kazuma's sister. 

"If you fail, we're both gonna die," Jiraiya replied in a matter of fact tone. 

It made him wince. 

When he was twelve years old, a pair of Akatsuki members named Kisame and Itachi had sought to kidnap him. Sasuke had arrived and tried to help, but Itachi -- _his brother_ -- had dispatched him without even bothering to put any effort into it. Naruto had tried to fight back, but Kisame's sword had siphoned off his chakra just as fast as he had started gathering it up. It had been one of the only times in his life where Naruto was genuinely scared. More so, perhaps, than when he had fought Kabuto, because Kisame had taken his entire ability to fight back in the first place. Then Jiraiya had showed up, and if not for his intervention... 

He had to suppress a shudder at the thought of what they would have done to him, even without tearing the Nine-Tails out of him. It was something that occasionally gave him nightmares. 

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he said, sardonic and insincere. 

"Anytime," Jiraiya replied with the same tone. 

In the lull between words, something made him want to barge back into town, hunt down Hinata and have a word with her. He didn't know why, but the last time he had spoken with her -- really _spoken with her_ -- it had resulted in him having the confidence to take down the greatest genius the Hyuuga Clan had produced in generations. 

That confidence would've been useful right about now. 

He didn't speak of it though, and if Jiraiya had noticed, the man didn't have the wherewithall to point it out. 

"We're here," he announced, pulling Naruto's eyes off of the city and forward again. Together, they stood atop the cliff that could yet become the final battlefield for both of them. It was windy, and Naruto could hear Jiraiya's hair rustling about. "From here on out, it'll be kill or be killed. Don't let me down." 

"I'm not a killer," Naruto mumbled, looking back over his shoulder at the ocean. 

"You're a better killer than you give yourself credit for. I just wish you'd admit it and stop holding yourself back after this." 

Jiraiya was already walking towards the same rock he had used earlier today. 

Naruto remained anchored to his spot, staring out at the sea. Sunset would last a while longer, but it was almost twilight and the night promised to be a long one. 

In perhaps as little as a few minutes time, he and Shunseito Kazuma -- the Cloud Jounin known as Chimi Tensho -- would be locked into mortal combat. They would fight to the death, and where Gama Kensei had been able to survive another battle that was supposed to be to the death... 

Well, Naruto was starting to doubt his own prospects.

* * *

Kazuma felt his smile go dead the moment the door slid shut. In its place, his expression hardened considerably, becoming so stony that it may as well have rivaled a statue. Kenji, apparently oblivious to this, turned and faced him with that stupid looking grin on his face. 

"What did you wanna talk to me about?" He asked, a hand reaching up towards the back of his head. 

"Do you love my sister?" Kazuma asked, blunt as a sledgehammer. He wasn't up to playing games right now. 

"_Yes_," Kenji answered so quickly that it was almost like a pure reflex to get the words out. 

For a long moment, the two regarded each other. For perhaps the first time, maybe the last as well, Kazuma saw his sister's suitor -- really _saw him_ for who and what he was. 

Kurosawa Kenji was a third-generation samurai. He was all of a year and a day older than Ayane, and in virtually every way, he was an aesthetic nightmare for Kazuma's senses. Orange-haired, blue-eyed and cursed to wear the ugly golden clothing of a samurai until he was transfered to another place, Kenji was everything a ninja _wasn't_. His only saving graces were that he was a casual practitioner of Tekken and an expert swordsman who could actually beat Kazuma himself in a _proper_ duel. He was somewhat overconfident, more perceptive than Kazuma had originally thought and far tougher than he looked. Above that though, he was loyal. 

And that was the only reason Kazuma did what he did next. 

"If I fail to return tonight, you have my permission to marry her on the strict condition that you remain together until both of you die," he stated, leaving no room for arguement. 

If Kenji accepted it, his options to marry into a higher-ranking samurai clan would be gone. If he didn't, Kazuma was resolved to kill him on the spot and dispose of the body before the duel. 

The response he got, in hindsight, shouldn't have been all that much of a surprise. Kenji cracked a grin that was entirely _too_ defiant for Kazuma's tastes, yet so honest that he found himself forgiving it almost instantly. 

"I'm gonna do that even if you come back alive." 

For the first time since he had met the man, Shunseito Kazuma actually found himself _liking_ Kurosawa Kenji. 

"Take care of her then," he ordered with a nod. 

After Kenji bowed in agreement, Kazuma crossed the room and made his way up the ladder one more time. He pushed the panel aside, stepped onto the roof and then gently eased it into place. Then he turned towards the cliff and cracked his neck and knuckles. 

Finally, after a long pause to breathe in the city air -- it was unusually clean today -- Chimi Tensho started towards the cliff, and towards whatever destiny had planned for him...

* * *

As luck would have it, Naruto once again found himself waiting on a masked Jounin. The difference between waiting on Hatake Kakashi and waiting on Shunseito Kazuma was as stark as it was simple: He hadn't ever waited on Kakashi in order to fight him to the death. 

Somehow, that made all the difference in the world. 

When Tensho finally did arrive, Naruto hadn't greeted him with more than a glare. _Why_ had he bothered showing up? And why didn't Jiraiya just try to run away? 

For the first time in his life, Naruto had been tasked with protecting someone against an opponent and was given time enough to think about it. It had been easy enough when he had taken on Zabuza to save Kakashi, or when he had fought Gaara tooth and nail for the life of Sakura, or even when he had taken on Kabuto for the sake of Tsunade... 

But now that he had been given time to actually _think_ about it, he didn't really know if it was worth it anymore. Whoever wanted Jiraiya dead must have had a good reason and-- 

And he stopped himself from going down that line of thought. 

Once, he had sworn on the blood of his own hand that he would never run away. Not too long after that, he had sworn on the lives of his comrades that he would protect them. If he was to become Hokage, _he could not run away from this_. 

Chimi Tensho didn't acknowledge the inner strife that Naruto was facing, but perhaps that made it all the more difficult when he finally spoke up. 

"_Uzumaki Naruto_!" The man called. They now stood across from each other, seperated by thirty or forty feet. 

When he didn't call back, Tensho continued. 

"Where is your forehead protector?" He demanded. 

Naruto stared at him. 

"Put it on. I want to fight a fellow shinobi, not a misguided welp with delusions of grandeur." 

An acknowledgement. 

In his own way, Tensho -- _Kazuma_ -- was acknowledging him. Jounin to Genin, Cloud-nin to Leaf-nin, man to man. Perhaps he wasn't calling him an equal, but he was giving him a kind of respect that Naruto had simply never been granted before. Not even by Sasuke in the Valley of the End. 

To show his gratitude, Naruto complied without hesitation. 

His jacket came unzipped, and a hand plundered into it. When he finally drew out the protector, it had somehow become bonded to the strip of cloth that Jiraiya had bought him. Almost instantly, his mind wandered to the thought that maybe the protector had somehow done this on its own, but a few moments later, he remembered that Jiraiya had repaired his clothing. In doing so, he had probably put together the protector. 

Without a word, Naruto lifted it up to his head and wrapped the bandana around. Then he tied it into a tight knot, leaving two sections to hang down from the back of his head. At first, it felt a little annoying, but as he straightened the piece over his forehead, he found it more and more comfortable by the moment... 

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Uzumaki Naruto was a Leaf ninja again. 

"Much better," Kazuma said, and by the tone of his voice, he meant it. "You have the pride of a ninja, Uzumaki. It's a shame you weren't born to the Cloud." 

"Thanks," Naruto replied. "For what it's worth, you're not a bad guy either." 

Almost as one, the two tensed. Naruto's hand shot towards his shuriken holster, Kazuma's right went for his sword and his left for his own holster. 

Less than a second later, the battle began...

* * *

She was alone. More and more, she was glad to be. Sakura had gone off to practice with Tsunade and Kiba was off doing whatever he did with Akamaru that constituted training. They had all been given the same virtual internment that everyone else from the Leaf was being given. It was the Godaime's orders: Until tomorrow, they were to stay put in the hotels and not leave unless it was to visit another Leaf-nin who happened to be in a different hotel. 

With Sakura gone, Hinata had tried to resume a habit that Neji had helped her form. Every sunset, just before the evening twilight, she would assume a meditative position and activated the Byakugan. Without anyone or anything to distract her, she would strive to increase its ability -- field of vision, telescopic range, spotting tenketsu... 

This afternoon was meant to be nothing different. It didn't turn out that way. 

She had knelt down onto the floor, using a folded up blanket in place of a mat. Then, she had performed the correct order of seals and closed her eyes. The familiar sensation of a network of veins bulging around her face and eyes hadn't been long in coming, and it resulted in the unique view of seeing through her own eyelids. Tonight, she had decided to focus on seeing through things with telescopic vision, and... 

Well... 

She hadn't meant to see it. Really. She didn't even know it was going to happen, but the moment her Byakugan caught it, it remained glued to the scene. It was so far away, but felt so close that she could almost reach out and touch him... 

But she couldn't. 

Like so many other times, all she could do was watch from a distance, and this time, even more so than it had when he fought Neji for what she'd been told was for _her_ honor, it hurt. 

It hurt because his opponent looked to be a Cloud-nin with a sword. 

As one, the two struck out at each other, and Hinata felt herself wincing on reflex when Naruto came out on the losing end of the exchange. He dodged the shuriken, and he dodged the blade to follow them, but he couldn't avoid the kick that came after the sword. It caught him in the chest in mid-sweep, just as he had ducked beneath the sword and gotten to his opponent's side. 

Naruto rolled back and sprang back up to his feet, but he was again put on the defensive. It didn't seem fair. 

It didn't seem fair to her that he had to fight _another_ uphill battle, especially not when he looked to be in such distress. It didn't seem fair to her that his opponent had a weapon when he seemed unarmed. 

It especially didn't feel fair to her that she couldn't be there to finally pay him back for all that he had done for her... 

But life was unfair, and all that Hinata could do now was watch and wait... 

Watch, wait and pray.

* * *

Duck, sidestep, jump, block. 

It happened so fast that he couldn't even react in any other way but to defend himself; ducking the blade as it cut to the side, sidestepping it as it thrust for his chest, then jumping the slash aimed for his legs. Then, as he was huddled up in the air, Kazuma caught him with an upwards kick straight out of a crouch. It was all that Naruto could do to block the hit with his forearms, and after it was made, he immediately flew back. 

Several times, he flipped in mid-air, then landed in a bent posture with a backwards skid. Tensho seemed frozen for all of a second after Naruto landed, then he fell forward onto his outstretched leg and virtually flowed -- just as wind might in a storm -- into a spin, drawing the sword in and-- 

Naruto saw the sparks. On instinct, he jumped to the side... 

"RAIHEIJIN!" 

There was a thunderous crack, but Naruto wasn't the only one hurting this time. As the sword slit its way across his cheek and spilled evaporating blood into the air, his knee caught Kazuma directly in the stomach, halting him with such force that the man's entire body curled up around his knee. A split second later, Naruto's elbow crashed across Tensho's temple and jarred him into a spin. 

The sword came around again, but Naruto was ready for it. Wielding a kunai pulled just before his jump, he struck the side of the blade and released the weapon on impact, ducking down as he did so. In an instant, the kunai liquified and splattered across the ground nearby, but the sword had lost its charge and passed harmlessly overhead with a whistling cry. Reflexively, Naruto hurtled forward and slammed his forehead into Chimi's own, cracking protector against protector and bringing them eye to eye-- 

Kazuma faltered back. 

Naruto caught him in the jaw with an uppercut and used the momentum to spin his way up into the air and follow with a downwards sweeping kick. This time, Tensho was the one blocking, catching Naruto's heel on the angle where handguard and blade met, causing the sword to literally sing with the shock of the blow. Without missing a beat, Naruto followed through by tilting forward and bringing a fist down. 

Kazuma caught this one on his forehead protector. It was such a hard collision that Naruto felt his knuckles cracking against the metal. 

For all of a moment, the two were frozen like that, and then Naruto noticed Kazuma pulling something from his thigh... 

He didn't wait to find out what it was. As a series of bladed projectiles flashed through the air where he had been, Naruto used his fist as a spring to handstand on Kazuma's head, roll off and land in a crouch behind him. He had already drawn another kunai, and was in mid-spin to stab it into the man's back when the sole of a sandal hit him in the face. 

Naruto didn't fly back though. He felt chakra surge between the rubber and his skin, even though he was belatedly noticing that the area around the cut on his cheek had gone numb. 

With that, Kazuma spun around and used his foot to drag Naruto right through the air in the same way one might swing a ribbon. A split second later, he let go, hurling the youth straight up overhead and flowing back into another stance-- 

Naruto looked down and saw Tensho poised to strike. The man was crouched down as if about to jump, the sword was aimed straight up at his face and its blade was sparkling blue. One of Tensho's hands swept out in front of it, then pulled back and he was airborn. 

"KAGE BUNSHI-" 

The instant there were two Naruto's, one of them exploded on impact with the blade. The other, hurled aside just before impact, felt something slap across his chest as Kazuma blurred by. A second later, he hit the ground with a skid on his back and rolled right up to his feet in time to see Chimi Tensho pulling his hands through a set of seals that were utterly alien to him. When it was done, the man held out his left hand, index and middle fingers pointing at Naruto and-- 

"_RAITON: BENIKIAI_!" 

The next thing he knew, his world turned _red_. 

It was a kind of pain that dwarfed even being stabbed with Raiheijin and pierced with Chidori. Red lightning blew up from the ground around him, arcing high into the cloudless night sky like a bloody crack in reality. In an instant, it rendered him blind, deaf, numb and burnt, searing through his body and melting the soles of his sandals so quickly that he couldn't register it even before pain overloaded the rest of his senses. It felt as if it dragged on for a thousand years, defying all logic and mercy as his hair singed black at the tips, his eyes were rendered a monotone blood red and his heart repeatedly stopped beating. 

Then it ended, and Naruto collapsed forward to his knees. 

He couldn't see. His body was so wracked with pain that it hurt just to exist, and only distantly did he even register the feeling of something sharp pressing against his back... 

_ From inside his chest. _

As his hearing returned, clouded with the sound of a million drums pounding furiously all at once, Naruto heard the all too close sound of the back of his jacket tearing and a splatter of blood across the ground behind him. When his vision returned, he was staring up into Chimi Tensho's eyes at near point blank, though the world was still tinted red. 

"It's over," Kazuma said, his voice muffled in Naruto's ears. 

But for all the pain, for all the agony and everything else, he couldn't help but smile. Blood trickled down from his lips, steaming a fine red tint across his teeth as he bared them. When he spoke, it was in a cracked voice, but... 

"That's... A real... Nice... _Tassle_ ya got there," he said, grinning like a fox. 

Kazuma's eyes widened, and in an instant, the Uzumaki Naruto he had run through exploded into a cloud of pinkish smoke as another one burst out of a second cloud at the bottom of the hilt of his sword. 

The _real_ Naruto swung around, his left hand clinging desperately to Chimi's forearm as his right hooked through the air and came flying in at full speed. His feet never hit the ground, and the Rasengan that formed in his grasp was fast, furious and blue as the very lightning that clung to Kazuma's blade during Raiheijin. It was a spectacular turnaround, to say the least... 

But the reversal dwarfed it. 

Kazuma's reactions were as frenzied and accurate as that of a berserker who knew what it meant to stay alive in battle. Rather than try to retreat, he _threw himself_ forward and ducked beneath Naruto's right arm, dragging the left along with him by default. As Naruto struggled to maintain his grasp on the vortex of chakra whipping about in his hand, Kazuma spun around and slashed free of his grasp, sinking the blade inches deep through his side and slicing back out in a spray of blood. 

Instantly, he lost control, and the subsequent explosion of the Rasengan hurled him into the ground with enough force to leave a shallow imprint around his body. 

Chimi staggered back several steps and fell over backwards into a seating position. Naruto couldn't bring himself to move. 

"_Shit_," he bit out, feeling warmth spread across his side as he started bleeding. 

"Performing Kage Bunshin, transforming into a sword tassle and masking the switch with a Blast Note... _What the hell are you_?" Kazuma sputtered out from nearby, his mask faltering a bit. 

"I'm from Konoha," Naruto answered, unsteadily pushing himself up onto one arm as his other tried to hold the sword wound shut. "_I'm gonna be Hokage_!" 

With that, he heaved until he was sitting up, then heaved again until he was kneeling before finally pushing himself up to his feet on willpower alone. 

"... You're insane," Kazuma replied, easing back up to his feet with far less trouble than the bloodied youth before him. "Completely _insane_ to think that you're going to live long enough to do that." 

With that, the man drew his sword up and made ready for another Raiheijin thrust... 

An instant later, the attack came.

* * *

And, far removed from the battle, locked away inside of a hotel room, Hyuuga Hinata felt her eyes water.

* * *

The blade slipped through.

* * *

She wanted to scream.

* * *

Eyes went wide.

* * *

She wanted to get up and run to his aid.

* * *

The attack hit home.

* * *

But above all...

* * *

He couldn't avoid it...

* * *

She just wanted him to be okay.

* * *

And so he didn't. 

Three seconds later, a body hit the ground and the contest was over. 

_ End Part Six

* * *

_

**Author's Note:** You have no idea how much fun I had paralleling the opening scene from Part Two with this one. I think they ended up matching each other perfectly in terms of overall word and linecount.

And for the record: Benikiai means Crimson Release. Since I didn't get to describe it properly during the fight, I'll explain a bit of it now: It's performed by slapping a Note onto the target, then triggering it remotely with hand seals and chakra. Once triggered, a colossal bolt of red lightning shoots up around the victim and, as Naruto can tell you, fries their asses to a crisp. It's a Cloud-nin technique I devised.

And since I likely didn't ever mention it, Raiheijin means something like Lightning Sword Blade. Obvious, ain't it? 

Hopefully I wrote Hinata well for the snippet she appeared in this Part. I had originally intended to end her involvement back with the scene in the alleyway, but she's an infectious little wench.

Now... Who lived? Who died? Won't you just wanna _kill me_ while you wait to find out? 


	7. Parting of Paths

**Foreword:** Soundtrack below.

**Scene One:** Rurouni Kenshin - Departure(Piano Solo)  
**Scene Two-Onward:** Ghost in the Shell - Inner Universe

* * *

**The Indirect Approach**  
_ Epilogue: Parting of Paths_  
Until we meet again

* * *

It took three seconds. No more, no less. 

Three seconds to shatter a life into a million pieces, none of which could ever be picked up again. 

As the sword plunged in, he had hurled himself by it, the scroll swinging up and wrapping around its blade. With a scream, he had activated it. Fuuinken no Jutsu -- The Sealing Sword Technique. In an instant, as his shoulder hit Kazuma's chest, the Cloud-nin's sword vanished, leaving the bolt of lightning to strike sideways through the air before dissipating on its own. 

Kazuma had been thrown back, but Naruto's left hand had finished what he started. Disarmed, the Jounin was unprepared, and a relatively weak Rasengan had passed into his chest. For all of a moment, Naruto had felt his palm against Kazuma's heartbeat. Felt the life in the man's body, envisioned flashes of what his life had been like and wondered how his sister, Ayane, would survive without him... 

And then, Chimi Tensho's back had exploded in a cloud of blue chakra. It had annihilated all of the organs in his chest, so that he couldn't even scream if he wanted to. His spine had also been blown out, preventing him from even feeling the agony of death. 

As the second moment ended, Shunseito Kazuma hit the ground in a sprawl, blood sprayed across the ground in every direction beneath and beyond him. His eyes, cloudy and once so full of pride, were blank, and if his mouth was contorted into a silent cry of pain, Naruto wasn't able to see it through his mask. 

As if of its own volition, the scroll rolled up into his hand with the sound of a dry clap. His fingers clenched around it instantly. 

It was not Naruto's first kill. It wouldn't be his last, either... 

But more so than any of the others to date, it was one he knew that he would regret for a long, long time. 

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking. 

"Don't be," Jiraiya ordered, stepping up from wherever he had been during the battle and standing next to him. 

"I _am_..." 

For too long, neither of them said anything. Naruto became distantly aware of the heated feeling in his side and cheek -- the wounds bubbling and healing from a surge of the chakra that had been denied him in battle. 

"... You're way too soft, kid," Jiraiya finally said, just as Naruto felt his eyes start to water. A hand slapped across the top of his head not long after that, scruffing his hair up. 

"What now?" Naruto asked, snorting back and wiping his eyes on his sleeve. 

"I don't know," Jiraiya answered with an audible shrug, drawing his hand away. "At any rate, we won't be able to leave until tomorrow." 

He nodded. 

"I'd like to bury him here." 

Jiraiya didn't argue.

* * *

The next day, Naruto awoke to find himself alone in the hotel room. Jiraiya had left a note for him, and in his unusually immaculate handwriting, it said simply: 

_ Gone to get us a ride out of here.   
Don't bother looking for me.   
I'll find you.  
- The Glorious Mountain Sage Alien Ninja Sex God of the Underworld, Jiraiya _

Upon reading it, his only real thought was every bit as simple as the note itself. 

_ "Smug prick's probably out trawling whore-houses and peeping at women as they bathe again." _

For once though, he didn't mind it so much.

* * *

After throwing his jacket and shirt back on -- Jiraiya had repaired them during the night -- Naruto had left the hotel. He made it a point to actually pay for his stay, chiefly because the money that Jiraiya had taken from Kazuma's body and given to him didn't feel right to keep. He wanted to be rid of it all as soon as possible... 

But there was something else he had to do too.

* * *

A while later, Naruto had again appeared outside the Shunseito Ramen, clutching the metal plate that had once been worn so proudly on Chimi Tensho's forehead. He stood across the street from it, but the only thing to greet him was not a friendly face belonging to the waitress and owner. It was a sign, written in the stylized manner of a samurai. It said: 

_ Closed, pending marriage and funeral arrangements.   
Don't ask._

And so, he didn't. 

Instead, he tucked the plate back into his jacket and made a promise to the girl -- to Ayane -- to come back one day, and to deliver it to her by hand. Perhaps by then, he would be wearing the garb of a Hokage...

* * *

A little after that, he found himself quite literally crashing into someone who was fleeing a nearby bath house. 

After the collision, he had scraped himself up and given his unwitting assailant a once-over. 

It was a boy, wearing a golden hakama and kimono with a wakizashi short-sword at his side. There were red patterned clouds colored near the cuff of each sleeve and the bottom of each pant leg, and when he looked at the boy's face, he found it eerily familiar... 

The main reason being that the kid had solid white hair that stuck out in a hundred million directions at once. 

"MOVE, MORON!" The boy screamed, shoving past him and running off down the sidewalk as an irate looking woman in nothing but a towel charged off after him. 

"_GOVERNOR'S SON OR NOT, I'M GONNA KILL YOU THIS TIME, TENRAIMARU!_" 

_ "What the hell was that about?"_ He wondered. 

For a few moments, he stared off after them. Then, finally, he shrugged and continued on his way.

* * *

Some time later, Jiraiya had finally shown up, again wreaking of women and cheap booze, but looking decidedly sober for his troubles. He then lead Naruto back down to the harbor and into a boat, identified as the Ichigan. 

As they departed, he couldn't help but feel that he was being watched. He would probably never know it, but he was right. 

At the top of the cliff, near where a sword had been stabbed into the ground above a mound of freshly moved dirt, a girl with white eyes watched the Ichigan set sail, ignorant of the fact that she herself was being watched by the rest of her team. 

When the boat finally moved out to the point that her Byakugan was no longer able to keep a clear watch on Naruto, she turned around and joined the others. She never explained why, but the rest of the day, and well into the night, she couldn't stop smiling. 

_ A few weeks later, Hyuuga Hinata became a Chuunin. _

End

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thanks for reading and reviewing, everyone! This was short, and the ending was probably a bit abrupt, but I had planned it to be that way from the start. I wanted it to read in such a way that you would envision it like the credits at the end of a movie. Sort of.

But at least one thing _must_ be said...

If you can't figure out what connection Tenraimaru had with all of this without me spelling it out for you, I'm not even gonna bother >.>

That said: I went to great lengths to try and maintain the ability to fit this entire story into the canon of the Naruto manga. I took a few liberties here and there(mostly with Hinata), and I'm sure that the whole thing will eventually be disproven completely by the actual Naruto series, but I'm proud to say that as of this posting, it _can_ fit. I think.

And in spite of the teasing, I never intended to actually hook Naruto and Hinata up in it.

So, with all that out the way, kudos.

Sh33p _out_. 


End file.
